Ophiuchus 01: The Secret Life of Gardenias
by musubi.kei
Summary: "History is an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace, and revolution continue on forever." Sanq Kingdom, A.C. 181: of a certain pair of five year-olds and the beginnings of their secret war. 6&9&13 *Ch.6 (2/3), In which Milliard and friends indulge in dancing, insults, fear and violence.
1. Introduction

**《****Ophiuchus Historia****》**

**.**

At the turn of a dying century, humanity turns towards life amongst the stars as the universal solution to all its problems. Massive space stations envisioned in each of the five Earth-Moon Lagrange points formed a region around the blue planet that would come to be known as the 'Earth Sphere'. However, the peace they bought would prove to be short-lived as conflicts once again break out amongst major players on the world stage for resources and territorial rights on the newly completed space colonies.

A massive exodus began, abandoning the Earth to its own folly, and lasted nearly thirty years until territorial lines are redrawn and the various warring factions lose interest. Three years after this uneasy truce, world leaders were finally convinced to come together and negotiate an alliance to open a new chapter in humankind's history.

A hundred and thirty-three years after the successful launch of the first colony satellite, a new year designation was retroactively applied to commemorate the first step towards universal harmony: A.C., After Colony.

消逝的世纪末，人类转向迁居宇宙以解决地球上的种种问题。 设在地球与月亮两天体之间的五个天平点上的庞大太空站环绕着地球，与地球形成了后来所谓的'地球圈'。 可惜，这番功夫所换来的和平并不持久。 地球各个主要权势为了互相竞争资源及新开发的殖民领地，再次发生斗争。

逃离战火的人们纷纷舍弃地球，移民宇宙殖民地，直到约三十年后，共争的各方重新划下领域界线，失去战意收场。 之后又经三年，才说服世界领导人聚首结盟，终于展开了历史新章。

距离首座殖民卫星发射一百三十三年，人类为纪念向世界和平迈出第一步，倒冠新年号 '殖民后'，统称：A.C., After Colony。

《Book One: The Secret Life of Gardenias》

《其一: 栀子花园》


	2. Chapter 1: Guernsey Flair

**「****The Secret Life of Gardenias****」**

**「**July, 181: Encounter – Guernsey Flair**」**

**Gundam Wing © SOTSU AGENCY - SUNRISE - ANB**

**This is a work of derivative Fanfiction. No claims are made towards the ownership of intellectual rights pertaining to the metaseries.**

**...**

"Lucius," The young prince scowled at his Chief Tutor, in case the man had not noticed. "Lucius, he's a girl."

"I believe the appropriate pronoun is 'she', your Highness." The older man bowed deeply.

"That's a girl, Lucius," his Prince snarled, stubbornly refusing his observation. "I will not be made a laughing stock!"

"Begging your pardon, sir," the clean-faced figure of decorum curtsied towards Baronet Lucius Darlian, "is my appointment not to prevent his Highness Prince Milliard Peacecraft from becoming a laughing stock?"

Lucius nodded briefly, with a slight quirk in the corner of his mouth for his favourite cousin. "Indeed, Lady Larucca. His Majesty appears to be of the opinion that if his Highness' consequences are to be borne by a lady, perhaps he will think twice about his actions from now on."

Milliard chewed viciously on his lip. They had him at a disadvantage. It was true that the traditional threat of visiting punishment on his study companions has hitherto done nothing for the Princeling's discipline. He simply never developed the friendship and affection towards his whipping boys that was generally relied upon to keep the sons of Kings in line.

The whole system was boorishly archaic. Following the abolishment of corporal punishment five years prior to his birth, the position of Boy of the Bedchamber has safely become, in Milliard's mind, nothing more than a farcical attempt at forcing him to be chummy with the heirs of ambitious members of Court. Why else would any one send their children forward to be whipped in his stead? Milliard was well aware of the incorrigible little horror he could be, and was often proud of his antics. In fact, the worst abuse the boys have had to face usually came from the Prince himself.

It was also true that as a gentleman, he could never allow any harm to fall to a female member of his household. This was what King Byron Peacecraft the Third was counting on when he approached Baronet Darlian for an introduction.

The ability to empathise with one's people and command their loyalty is a mark of breeding amongst those of noble blood. What manner of ruler can one who is unable to win over even a single child become? Regardless of Sanq's image issues, Byron was more concerned about his son. It was not natural for a five year-old boy to refuse to have friends. Thus far, the Prince has managed to bully most of his companions into resignation, and found reason to demand the removal of those he could not. Lucrezia Larucca would not be so easily daunted. The King has seen this himself in the Courtyard games witnessed from his study.

She was a plain child, remarkable only because of her rare purple eyes, holding the stick that was her imaginary sword with dignity at her side as she curtsied before the King.

"Do pardon our appearance, your Majesty," she explained of the dirty scrapes on her arms and the papery fragments in her hair from when someone had tripped her into a pile of dead leaves. "We have only just returned from defending your honour in far off lands."

Byron looked down curiously from his window, into the small circle of nervous, pint-sized troops, of whom she was obviously the leader. "Oh? And what have you to report, soldier?"

He was surprised when she sketched him an inexpert salute, and more so at her next words. "That all the Martians have been defeated, sir! With no casualties on either side, as per orders."

Byron burst into roaring laughter. Not knowing what else to do, confronted by those serious little up-turned faces, he promoted them all to Knights of Mars with her as their Captain, and sent them off to a well-deserved victory treat of cake and ice-cream.

It seemed a crazy idea, at first, but the more he sat on it, the more he liked it. Lucrezia had a way about her that made every child at Court like her, regardless of age and standing. Although this was only her third month at Court, she has already secured, according to the servants, most of their fickle trust and loyalty. If she could not teach Milliard a thing or two about getting along with others, then at least she will make him a formidable ally.

Lady Elena of the Laruccas was the youngest daughter of Earl Biecher, the retired Grand General of Bryon's father's armies, before marrying into Italian nobility via Duca Ermanno Larucca, cousin of the Iron Crown. Lucrezia was the middle child of three, entrusted to Lucius' care for the duration of the Lady's post-natal illness.

"Evidently, few of the relatives know what to do with such a wild child," the Prince's Chief Tutor was apologetic. "She worships her brother, who is currently attending his first year in Luxemburg, and aspires to serve as his Page upon his ascension to Squire."

The corners off the King's mouth twitched. "But she is a girl," he pointed out casually.

"Yes, your Majesty, she is aware." Lucius replied meaningfully. It may be more apt to say that Lucrezia was thrust upon him to keep her out of sight, since Lucius Darlian, unlike the rest of the clan, had never left the Sanq Kingdom and has thus never had any dealings with the Court of the Iron Crown. The same dark secret saw Alessandro Larucca sent away to school.

Lucius' reservations stem from the flippancy their Aunts and Uncles had displayed when entrusting the little girl to a man who knew little in the ways of raising children, implying how much easier it would be to chalk it up to his inexperience and move along should the child turn up missing one day. It came as no surprise to him that his cousin considered running away to seek out her brother her only option in life. And yet, perhaps because of the way the family sacrificed them so easily in their games of political intrigue, Lucius was even more determined to keep her safe by his side.

Byron regarded his friend. "We cannot, as King, allow your personal responsibilities to interfere with the Prince's studies," he said deliberately, "neither can We, as a friend, allow you to neglect your duty towards your kinsman. Therefore, I hope you will consider Our proposal to appoint your cousin to Milliard's Companion, so that you may keep her by your side in the course of your service to Us. Of course, she will be allowed the education and every privilege and concession suitable to a lady of such position…"

The problem, in Lucrezia's eyes, was that the only ladies of a rank similar to being Companion to the Prince were the Princess' Ladies-in-Waiting. "I refuse," she told the two men flatly, abandoning manners in her revulsion. "I will not be cooped up, being expected to paint and sew and recite insipid love poetry."

"Lucrezia, you are in the presence of the King!" Her cousin flustered.

The little Lady Larucca held her chin high and her hands primly behind her back, meeting the clear blue gaze of her sovereign. "It is difficult to respect a man as a King when his actions betray him as hypocrite."

Byron raised an eyebrow. 'Insipid' and 'hypocrite' were very big words for a girl-child of five. "How so?"

It was an expression that has cowed many a pompous dignitary and quelled many an argument. Lucrezia Larucca did not shirk from it. "What else do you call a man who would make a girl his new Knight-Captain in recognition of her skills, then return two days after to offer her the life of a simpering n… ninny?"

She had meant to say 'Nanny', because that was exactly what it sounded like they were asking her to do. Only the miserable look of doom on her cousin's face caused her the shame to reconsider. In her indignation, she had forgotten to take into account his position in the King's pleasure. If Byron Peacecraft pleases, he could punish Lucius as well as her for the insolence. Lucrezia wringed her hands, suddenly frightened despite her strong front.

Byron leaned forward, meeting her firm stare.

He smiled.

"We apologise, Lady Larucca. It was not in Our intentions to mean any disrespect. What would you have Us do?"

She gulped and squeaked, "allow me the privilege and concession due _the Prince's Companion_. Let me work at the same lessons to the same standards, like any other would have had to do. I know you will find me to be as competent as any boy."

The King of Sanq glanced at the ashen face of Baronet Darlian, and extended his hand to the young lady. He would not ask such a thing of her had he not known Lucius' fears.

"Then in return, you must swear, like any other would have had to do, to never leave his Highness' side. In addition, you will not be answerable to his Highness, only to Us. Only We may relieve you of your duty."

Lucrezia'a brow furrowed in serious consideration. Being sworn into the King's service would put an end to her plans to escape to Luxemburg for Alessandro once she turned nine. She would be bound to go wherever the Prince went and partake in whatever the Prince does. On the other hand, she would have the opportunity to study and train under the best teachers possible on the continent. There can be no other opportunity like this.

Besides, it wouldn't be forever. At some point, the Prince will outgrow the need for a Court-appointed companion and then she will be free to do as she wished, with a Prince's education behind her. She would not be able to become her brother's Page, but she could, with enough hard work, win his respect as an equal. She shook the King's large hand.

Byron nodded grimly. Lucius let go of the breath he had been holding with a goofy grin.

Somehow, Lucrezia survived the interview without fainting. After that ordeal, the little, outraged, Prince was nothing.

"She won't do." Milliard said firmly. "Girls are not as strong, fast, or clever as boys. She'll never be able to keep up with me."

"_Ciò è così_, your Royal Highness?" Sarcasm dripped off every syllable of her formal address. Squaring off her shoulders, she switched to French in a Parisian drawl. "Perhaps you should try me on before jumping to conclusions."

"_Dies ist nutzlos_." The Prince replied with a proud toss of his golden curls. "Italian and French are languages of the old world. The language of the future is German."

"_Deutsch es ist, dann, Milliard Peaceccraft_." the girl responded unexpectedly by holding out her hand in a very masculine invitation to handshake. "_Ich bin Lucrezia Larucca._"

Milliard folded his arms across his chest and sniffed indignantly. "I shall call you _Neun_," he declared, "that's 'nine' in German. Because you're the ninth idiot they've sent me, and I can't be bothered to learn the names of those whom I will never meet again."

Lucrezia smirked, not bothering to hide her contempt for her new playmate. "We shall see, your _Highness._"

**...**

* * *

**A/N:**

The **Iron Crown** is the Iron Crown of Lombardy (a real artefact, not the Tolkien ripoff!), the crown of medieval Kings of Italy and one of the oldest insignias of European royalty (7th Century A.D., I think). It derives its name from a thin band of reinforcing iron on the inside, which reportedly contains one of the Holy Crucifixion Nails that Emperor Constantine supposedly had circulating around. For almost a thousand years (9th to 18th Century A.D.), it was the symbol of the Holy Roman Emperors (who were also Kings of Italy those thousand years).

**Edition History:**  
_3rd revision_– 25 Jan 09– should be the last. Hope the reason Milliard has to keep a whipping boy is better clarified now.  
_2__nd__ revision_– 1 Jan 09– renamed to more closely resemble Burnett's "The Secret Garden". Edits to phrasing, adjustments for the purposes of corresponding better to Chinese version, minor detail clarification on background details.  
_Original posting_– 5 December 08

**Glossary:**  
_Ciò è così_ - Italian "Is that so"  
_Dies ist nutzlos_ - German "This is useless"  
_Deutsch es ist, dann_ - German "German it is, then"  
_Ich bin_ - German "I am"  
_Neun_ – German "nine", Pronounced "No-in"

**Flower Language** **花言葉****:  
****Guernsey Flair** is the official "yellow geranium", although technically a pelargonium. Its traditional meaning is "Chance Encounter", which is puzzling because traditional flower language was invented at least 200 years _before_ the Guernsey Flair was cultivated. Best leave it to a matter of faith that there were varieties of lemon-yellow geraniums 200 years ago.


	3. Chapter 2 part 1: Wild Thistle

**「****The Secret Life of Gardenias****」**

**「**September, 181: _Quid Pro Quo_ – Wild Thistle**」**

**...**

Bishop to pawn, rook to… the golden-haired boy noticed his mistake immediately after making it and thought a word wholly inappropriate for a five year-old which, had it been uttered, would have forced his minders to wash out his companion's mouth with copious amounts of soap in his stead.

Normally, that would have made ample motivation for Prince Milliard Peacecraft to swear like a sailor at every opportunity. He was pretty sure he had lost at least three Boys on those trips to the royal bathroom and was more than eager to lose the latest one any way he can. On the other hand, it would severely diminish him in the eyes of the King and Queen to display any ungentlemanly conduct in the presence of a lady, which rather limited his options in light of the fact that his new Boy of the Bedchamber was a girl.

However, while it was bad form for Milliard to leave the customary worm in her tea (the _coup de grâce _for many of her predecessors) and subject her to the consequences of his mischief, one could not reasonably blame anyone except herself for the inability to become his academic peer, the other vital quality in this aging tradition. A Prince's Boy was his closest companion, his shadow and also his reflection, and a Prince has no need of a schoolmate who would become a hindrance to his education.

"Is father saying I'm no better than a girl?" He demanded at breakfast with the Queen the morning after their strained introduction. "I'm already working on algebra and the theory of arrowdyna… aerodenomi…"

"Aerodynamics?" Queen Katrina suggested kindly over her morning tea.

"Yes, the one about flying." His cheeks warmed at the slip, but the boy did not allow that to interrupt his petition. "It would be kinder to let her go before she embarrasses herself in the schoolroom by not being as advanced as I, and appoint someone closer to my level instead."

His stepmother smiled to herself in recognition of the familiar argument. "Maybe they're her favourite subjects."

"Katrina," Milliard sighed the long-suffering sigh of children frustrated with having to explain the obvious to their adults. "She's a girl. Girls are all about drawing unicorns, and poetry, and sewing flowers into dresses. It's boring."

"I'm a girl too. You don't think I'm boring," Katrina was quick to point out.

"No you're not, you're a woman!" The princeling protested. Katrina chuckled girlishly at the little Ladies' Man as he fixed his eyes on the fists bunched in his lap and blushed to the roots of his wavy blond hair.

"Highness," she advised when they have both regained their composure, "it's natural to generalise people's abilities based on what they are, but how do you know what someone is until you've gotten to know them?"

He was just going to have to deal with it himself.

Milliard wasn't worried though. There was an undeniable fundamental difference between the genders that he was unconvinced anyone could overcome. Even though she was two languages ahead of him and knew nearly as much as he about mathematics, history and astronomy, girls were neither as clever as boys nor as fast nor strong. It was a scientific fact. And seeing as no mere girl could stomach the life of a boy, he expected her to be gone as soon as she saw how much hard work was involved in life beyond the bower.

That it was taking her more than eight weeks to realise this was only more proof towards how dull-witted she was.

**.**

Lucrezia scowled at the chessboard. They should be outside, running with the other children and soaking up the sun, not cooped up in the Prince's rooms watching him devise chess strategies against himself. It wouldn't be so bad if he'd let her play too, except that would violate the spirit of his research, the goal of which, she grew certain, involved boring her to death… or, at least, into begging for release from the King's service.

She regretted accepting the position. Thus far, the experience was fairly disappointing. The playground was rife with tales of his devilry, and going forth to brave them was going to be her greatest adventure yet, greater, even, then Maytaug's Tooth-Fairy Hunt.

This past Spring, Milliard painted a frog in the red-and-blue colours of a poison-dart frog and left it in the schoolroom for young Lord Wadfield, who fainted when the poor thing plopped out from the schoolroom's water pitcher and tipped over his drinking glass in its attempt to get away. Last winter, they said he replaced the educational programs on the schoolroom's Personal Virtual Devices* with a collection of classic horror films that Lady Macintyre insists have scarred her son for life.

So, as much as she thought it to be no more than glorified babysitting, she had expected her new job to be a little more exciting than it was turning out to be. She also hadn't considered the devastation it would cause to her social life.

Prince Milliard did not care for anyone under the age of ten and their presence in his wing of the Palace was met with furious princely disapproval. Thus were the Royal Sanq Knights of Mars reduced to creeping along the Palace halls during His Highness' bath-time in order to meet with their Captain.

It wasn't strictly necessary to creep since the staff in the Prince's Wing never bother with enforcing his rules and were obliging enough to help steal those moments for them —provided it was before the children's bedtime— but it added greatly to the atmosphere of things.

"He's killing me," Lucrezia confessed to her most loyal troops.

"Didn't you say you can do anything as well as any boy?" Spencer leered as the eight of them huddled in a curtained alcove.

"I don't think a snobby recluse even counts as human, at this point," she huffed indignantly.

"What's a recluse?"

Lucrezia explained.

"Still beats joining the bower," Elisa Weridge replied sullenly. She was seven and expected to join the Princess' company in the next two years. In preparation for this honour, her aunt had started bringing her to lunch with the Queen's Ladies-in-Waiting. Elisa was not impressed. She did not have the vocabulary to call it a ludicrous farce, though she would if she did. What does it matter in this day and age to memorise poetry and embroidery instructions when all these can come easily to your fingertips at any time via the Internet? What is the point of learning recipes for ingredients that have not been in use for over two hundred years, or gossip about people you don't know?

"… don't you want to find out?"

Elisa made a face. "No!"

All eyes turned on her.

"Why not?"

"Aren't you curious at all?"

"You didn't actually listen to what we've been talking about, did you?" Thomas Feenly, the big brother of the group and Official Vice-Captain, sighed. Elisa blushed.

"When my sister goes wool-gathering, she's usually thinking about some boy," Dimitri grinned.

"We should find out what that chip on his Highness' shoulder is," Spencer repeated himself, ploughing stubbornly through the interrupting chatter.

"Oh, it must be the Princess. Turning into the eldest child does that. Everyone says Kristy loved kids until I came around. Now, she can hardly stand them."

"That's because her little brother is you," Lucrezia pointed out, drawing laughter from the rest, including Dimitri himself.

Their first clue came, perhaps unsurprisingly, from Elisa's weekly lunch dates. Rumour has it, she whispered confidentially to her fellow knights crouched together under a long side-table in the halls, that the Prince's on-going campaign against his study companions is the result of a private wager between him and the King. Unfortunately, that was as much as the Queen's Ladies knew and, at any rate, the new Alliance Emissary's wardrobe was a topic of far greater interest.

Micah wrote it all down dutifully in his best handwriting, which is to say he doodled brightly coloured geometric shapes across his sketchpad with a look of delighted concentration while his twin fiddled with a broken tape-recorder they had managed to find for her position as Micah's co-secretary.

"That's not fair!" Cammi remarked, punching buttons in a vigorous sequence of her own devising. She was only allowed to hang out at these meetings if she agreed to operate the recorder and leave Micah's crayons alone. Since this is the only time she gets to see Lucrezia any more, she was keen to ensure her continued attendance and for that, she told herself, she was going to operate the hell out of the damned thing.

"Shut-up, Cam," Spencer shushed her automatically. "You have to be quiet for the recorder to work."

"No I don't," she stuck her tongue out at the older boy, "it works fine. It just won't be able to hear us if we all talk at once, like mommy."

Spencer groaned. "Who's the idiot that told her?"

The whole point of giving Cammi the job was to shut her up while they talk about important things, just like telling Micah he has to write down everything they say was an easy means of keeping him occupied.

"Leave her alone, she's not being a bother," Elisa glared.

"Why don't you just quit?" Dimitri had been gathering the courage to propose all week. He did not expect it to go down well, but it seemed the best way to get Lucrezia out of her predicament.

"Luc's not a quitter!" Cammi scowled, screwing up her face in preparation for a defensive howling match. Micah nodded grimly and switched to a black crayon.

"Like you said, Cam, the Prince is not being fair… it'll be like not playing with a bully, right? So it's not really quitting, it's being clever," Dimitri explained quickly. "She wouldn't be the first, either."

Dimitri spoke from experience, though he was too ashamed to admit it. He had been Milliard's fifth Boy until he lost his nerve and let mother plead his way out of it before he'd even met the Prince. It had all been his father's idea anyway.

The older children fell into silent agreement. Dimitri had a point. It wasn't like they could hang Milliard up on a tree and prod him with twigs until he pinky-swears to mend his ways, he is the son of the King for-God's-sake; which is a shame because the hangman method worked admirably well on Spencer.

"It is the most sensible way, but you're not going to do it," the last member of their Order looked up from his hand-held game console. Alain spoke so rarely and softly that it was a moment before Lucrezia realised he had spoken, and whom he was speaking to. When their eyes met, she felt the shock of an empathic connection for the first time.

"Why, big brother?" Cammi piped up. Four year-olds adore the opportunity to ask 'why'. The actual answer is usually of lesser importance.

Alain kept his dark eyes on their leader and smiled a touch disturbingly. Lucrezia chewed on the inside of her bottom lip and fought to keep the tension out of her facial expression. There was no way he could have known her secret, yet, everything she was able to read from his posture said that he did. _Please don't tell,_ she thought hard at him. She could not afford to be exposed in front of the others, especially now, when her position is at its weakest.

Alain blinked and turned to his little sister, still smiling.

"Because I've just realised what's wrong with the Captain."

**.**

* * *

**A/N:**

I thought I'd best give you the first ~2000 words of chapter 2 soon as pos while I cobble the rest together, in case you forget me heh.

Fun fact. In Italian and French, among other languages, a slightly different grammatical form of_ quid pro quo,_ _qui pro quo,_ apparently mean "misunderstanding". Hence, when speaking any of these languages, the phrase _do ut des_ (latin. Lit. "I give so you may give") is used to mean the usual "something for something" instead.

**Revision History**:  
_Original Posting_- 25 Jan 09

**Flower Language** **花言葉****:**  
**Thistle** is the official Emblem of the Scotland, symbolising nobility of character and birth and almost universally meaning "(Karmic) Retribution". Legend has it that it was adopted by the Scots in the late 1200s, after an unfortunate incident involving a sneaky invading army and the folly of removing your shoes in a wild field while trying to sneak up on your enemies in the dead of the night. The word "OUCH" tells the rest of that story.


	4. Chapter 2 part 2: Wild Thistle

**「The Secret Life of Gardenias」**

**「**September, 181: _Quid Pro Quo_ – Wild Thistle**」**

...

Milliard waited before stepping out into the hallway, giving his treacherous staff time to usher the children out, though not quite enough to reveal his knowledge of their "adventure club meetings". He would have exposed them all except the resulting confrontation would inevitably betray how little control he had over his portion of the Palace, and that would be downright embarrassing.

He criticised Boy-Number-Nine for her rumpled gown, deducing from it that they had been hiding under the nearby side-table, and made a mental note to have that table moved. Perhaps he will need it in his bedchambers in the morning to build a new toy fort.

Under the constraints of etiquette and royal expectation, the dinner table was the last battlefield open to him and his opponent. Every evening when he was not required to join the Court's formal dinner, the Prince dined in his very own dining room with his most intimate subjects and whatever guests he chose to entertain, on a menu of his own design. This, too, was a crucial part of his education.

Until a month ago, Prince Milliard was a host of impeccable taste. Then he started ordering the occasional side of culinary oddity such as banana soup and fish jelly, and it went downhill from there. Courses of unidentifiable parts and dubious-sounding names paraded across his table with a five year-old boy's bloody-minded enthusiasm, turning the meal into a spectacle. For the fifth day straight, the only recognisable item was the customary dinner rolls. Milliard had been secretly relieved to discover that the "ants" featured in the traditional Chinese dish from the previous night were really preserved black beans. Alas, the same may be too much to hope for the golden silkworms nestled before him on a bed of mulberry greens.

He cringed and prodded gingerly at the succulent larvae when he thought Boy Nine wasn't looking. The rest of the meal was not any more promising.

It was clear to everyone involved that he was grasping for something with which to drive the young Lady Larucca screaming from his life, but whether it was the karmic lesson or the sheer sadistic pleasure of watching children suffer their own misfired pranks, neither his butler nor his chef deemed it important enough to mention that as an intimate member of the Court of the Iron Crown, high sovereignty of kingdoms that included parts of the South Slavic nation and Upper Arabia, Lucrezia Larucca would be well-used to the sight of exotic cuisine.

She inspected the main course gamely and took a small, curious, bite. Milliard held his breath. She chewed and swallowed, showing no ill effects or the slightest loss of composure. Pride demanded that he do the same. So eyes screwed shut, lungs clambering for air, the Prince chomped down a crispy forkful and promised himself that tomorrow, the dinner fare would return to being edible.

Several hours and bouts of teeth-brushing later, he sat sleepless in his window and reconsidered. Surely if he was close to breaking, she must be a miserable tortured heap ready to make her escape. It would be foolish to give up when victory was so close at hand!

As if on cue, a knock. It was her.

"You didn't seem to have much appetite at dinner, Highness, so I wondered if you might agree to join me in a light snack," she explained meekly, holding out a basketful of warm madeleines for his inspection.

The words "I accept" rolled off his tongue and back into his belly in confusion. He had not caught any of the keywords he had expected to hear, most notably, "I resign". A number of responses flashed through his mind, some not as appropriate as others. In the end, he settled for a relatively neutral "Thank you, I'd rather not think about eating right now."

"It helps to keep telling yourself there's no way they could have gotten into your stomach alive," she said, genuinely sympathetic.

He made a queasy grimace. "I'm not sure which is worse, the thought of them wriggling around in there or mashed up in a gloppy mess."

Lucrezia didn't know either.

There was a moment of mutual silence. Finally, Milliard accepted one of the little cakes. "Maybe if my stomach isn't rumbling I won't keep thinking about it."

Lucrezia nodded, biting into a clam-shaped pastry. "At least they were cooked," she shuddered, remembering the raw jellyfish that passed their table unmolested two nights ago.

"Cucumber sandwiches and macaroni chicken soup for the rest of the week then?" He mumbled to no-one in particular, naming the safest, blandest, foods he could think of.

"I liked the gazpacho," she ventured shyly. The chef made good gazpacho, though Lucrezia's pride would not let her admit that it reminded her of home.

"We can have some of that too," Milliard said graciously, hoping on crossed fingers that gazpacho was what he thought it was. Now that they were talking about it, he began to wonder how he could have let things gone this far. There were creatures in this world that little boys were simply not intended to eat, unless it is on a dare. Anything's fair game on a boys' dare.

He let her climb up the other side of the window-seat and sit with him, the basket of fragrant baked goods and an open pot of whipped butter between them.

"This does not mean we're friends," he cautioned.

She shrugged and, after a moment, added cryptically: "You're allowed more than one friend, you know."

Milliard stopped chewing and cast the strange girl-child a grim appraising look.

.  
"_I know what's wrong with the Captain," the boy smiled, shaking lank brown hair out of his earnest eyes. The other Knights under the long table huddled closer in anticipation, with exception of their Captain, Lucrezia, who fought to keep any expressions of fear out of her face. She had been so careful with her secret, and she knew her cousin would not have told anyone, even the King, since he had promised her as much._

_The adults say that discrimination is a crime of the past, but all the children knew better. People will always need some way to tell each other apart, and some differences are more unforgivable than others. Otherwise, who would you rally up together against?_

"Vous êtes belles mais vous êtes vides…_" Alain continued to smile, fixing Lucrezia with a deep knowing look. "'The little prince went away, to look again at the roses',"_

_And she started to smile too, a mix of relief, from having dodged the bullet, and dawning understanding. She recognised the passage, of course. Le Petit Prince is the standard reader for elementary French everywhere. "'You are beautiful'," she translated, "'but you are empty'."_

"_What does that mean?" Spencer demanded, exasperated at being handed a riddle in answer to a question._

"_It's from a book about an alien kid who got lost on earth," Cammie took pride in being able to inform him. "Is His Highness an alien?"  
. _

Lucrezia studied his clear blue stare. Under the moonlight, haloed in glowing ash-blonde hair, the Prince did look like he could have been from somewhere other than Earth.

"I know," he replied lightly, "but I don't want to."

"I don't need to be your friend to serve as your Boy," she changed tact.

Milliard rolled his eyes and sighed. "What planet are you from? The whole point is for you to become my best friend so that your family can enjoy the benefits of knowing someone dear to the heart of a future King. Why else would they have sent you here?"

Lucrezia winced. "I do not think that is the case with my family, your Highness," she said, and added, with a haughty toss of her chin that she and the other Knights had picked up from Dimitri's sister, "my family produces plenty of kings and princes of our own not to need anything from you. Can you say the same for your friend?"

Sparks flew when their eyes met.

He was almost certain she was bluffing, but did not want to appear foolish on the off chance that she wasn't. All he could remember about her for sure was that she is his Chief Tutor's cousin, and that she has an older brother his step-cousin's age.

"Don't say bad things about Rex," he snarled darkly. "He's better than any of you can ever hope to become."

_.  
Elisa grinned, catching on. "It means there's already someone he wants. In the book, the little prince found roses on Earth that were just like the one he had on his planet, then realises that none of them were good enough because they were not _his_ rose."_

"_He's acting out?" In a way, it came as a great relief to Dimitri to learn that the bullying was not personal. On the other hand, it was also greatly disappointing to find out that the Mastermind of such legendary pranks as the Prince's was just being a brat over the rules about who he got to play with._

"_There you have it," Spencer threw his hands up in disgust. "You might as well give up now, Luc. There's no way anyone can beat that!"  
. _

"How would you know? You rip everyone out like baobabs before they have a chance to sprout," Lucrezia lashed out, "without seeing what they are!"

Milliard smirked. "Because Rex is the only person to have ever beat me at anything."

She could hardly believe her ears.

"You're not that good. We only let you win because it'd be too embarrassing otherwise. After all, a future King can't lose to just _anyone_." Those were potent words and she knew it, but the surreality of standing in the dark and staring defiantly up at the elfin figure reclined against the starry window had brought her beyond caring.

The princeling's eyes narrowed.

"Take that back," he said flatly.

"No."

He jumped off the windowsill to find that he was an inch too short to tower over her, adding to the rising colour in his cheeks.

"Take it back," he demanded again, head held high.

"I will prove it," she retorted giddily, "I will beat you at anything."

He chose fencing; she called him 'sly'. Fencing was not due to begin in their syllabus for several weeks, although she knew from her cousin that he has been given instruction since the age of four.

"_Aus Schaden wird man klug_," he declared remorselessly and readied his weapon.

"I'm certain you're using that wrong," she muttered, securing her netted fencing mask. The child-sized practice epée was cold, dead, weight on her delicate arm. Her last memory, as he came towards her in a barrage of flashing blades, was of being thankful that he had not elected to compete in algebra. She hated algebra.

Lunge, parry, counter, feint, he chased her down the strip. A sometimes-student of the greatest swordsman in the world, Milliard was more than confident of his victory… and similarly shocked when, at the end of the long padded area, she suddenly struck back in an attack of her own and proved that she was no amateur herself by taking the first point.

Milliard responded by diving back towards her. Though he did not let up, his defence had been shattered, leaving him open to as many jabs and thumps as he dealt out. They shuffled clumsily off and on the practice mat, chasing each other intently across the Salle for close to forty minutes before the Royal Chief Tutor arrived to put an end to it.

"You can fence!" The Prince cried out, throwing down his epée in disgust.

"It wasn't very gracious of you to propose a competition in something you thought your opponent couldn't do, Highness." Baronet Darlian scolded, rebuking the pair severely for their irresponsible behaviour.

"But _she can fence!_"

"Injury grows intelligence," Lucrezia replied in brusque German. "In Roma, every child of breeding is taught the art of swordplay as soon as they are old enough to hold one. If you insist on making me an enemy, Highness, perhaps it would be in your interest to get to know me."

On the mezzanine overlooking the entire exchange, a white-armoured sylph breezed away from the banister, attended upon by a handful of ladies-in-waiting. One of them carried an ornate foil with an expression of abject terror, as if any minute, the blunted smallsword will leap out of her hands and decapitate someone.

"Your thoughts, Katrina?"

Katrina Peacecraft turned to the Royal Fencing Master. "He is too impetuous, strikes before he's thought things through, too anxious about receiving his blows," she assessed, accepting water from her attendants. "I'm afraid we've spoiled him rotten. You'll have your hands full."

"I have to earn my keep somehow," Dennis Weridge returned lightly. If he seemed unmoved by the conversation, it is because he was far more interested in assessing the Queen's comment. The skill of making accurate character observations is one that required constant honing. In this respect, he was the royal couple's trainer as much as he will be the Prince's.

"You know His Majesty would never allow that," the regal woman chuckled. "He's afraid you'd kick his ass if he works you too hard. Or, as we say in Royal-ese, 'your continued contentment is far too valuable to the realm'."

Master Weridge hid a smile. "And the girl?" He asked, returning to business.

"In some cultures," Katrina started thoughtfully, her eyes dancing after the feuding duo, "when a gentleman loses to a lady, he is expected to marry her."

This provoked a pause and a deep guffaw from the normally wary man that lasted several breaths. He remembered the surprising little girl's mother: a copper-headed wildcat with a temper to match, Sanq's former Grand General's youngest, and a natural with a sabre. Lucrezia has inherited her instinct for footwork.

At age seventeen, Elena Beicher had done just that, winning the hand of her elusive object of longing, to the astonishment of all the European dominions.

"She certainly takes after her mother," he managed to agree mildly, "but I'm not sure His Majesty would approve."

"Wouldn't it be interesting, though? Ellie's daughter and Marina's son…" The beautiful Queen smiled.

**...**

* * *

**A/N:**  
And so concludes chapter 2.  
**Strange foods and children**— I remember being at an age when we'd eat anything that didn't bite back or burn the roofs of our mouths off. My little brother ate little domestic black ants. Then one day, all of a sudden around age five, we stopped for no apparent reason and decided some of that stuff was really icky. I guess it's a phase kids go through. Naturally, exceptions have to be made for cultures in which some of the less universal foodstuffs are the norm. That said, you'd be surprised at how many cultures _do_ consider the commonly exotic 'common'. Sheep eyeballs are not exclusive to the Arabs!

_Aus Schaden wird man klug_— This is German, literally "through injury one becomes more intelligent", ie "you learn from your mistakes". So when Lucrezia says "Injury grows Intelligence", she is saying the same German words Milliard did earlier, only using them in a more appropriate situation. (I hope lol)

**Revision History:**  
_Original Posting_- 8 Feb 09

**Flower Language 花言葉**:  
(cont'd from part 1) The **Japanese Wild Thistle** is notably differentiated in Japanese flower language (possibly because it isn't supposed to grow anywhere else) from the Thistle and has the unique meaning of "Please get to know me more".


	5. Chapter 3: Zinnia

**「The Secret Life of Gardenias」**

**「**October, 181: Shared Bonds – Zinnia**」**

**…**

Actually, had Lucrezia truly taken after her mother, she would have dunked Milliard in the nearest duck pond weeks ago, damn the consequences!— still, that was a long time ago and we are none of us at thirty what we once were at sixteen.

The last of her father's brood, with all the social unimportance of a _nouveau titre_'s daughter, young Elena Beicher had been free to pursue whatever she pleased until her Cinderella marriage into the Court of the Iron Crown.

It is a story popular, for a time, in most of the European dominions. The details smudged between tellings, as stories do. Sometimes she was half of a pair, star-crossed lovers mutually conspiring against class traditions that would keep them apart; in others, he is the princess in his ivory tower and she is the besotted knight questing for his favour. Occasionally, he is the wily rogue who tricks past her defences to win her hand. It is the nature of things for people to take from stories what they will.

In Roma, Duca Ermanno frowned upon any shadow of the tale. In Sanq, it is a tavern song demonstrating the superior skills of an ordinary Sanq girl over a nobleman of the Neo-Lombard Empire.

Elena took nothing from it: she was neither the story-telling nor reflective sort. But if pressed by the right questions at the right time, in the right place, she would smile wistfully out the northern windows and shrug.

**.**

Alessandro Larucca is too young to be as angry as he was, though not without excellent cause. News of his sister had been near impossible to acquire, and what he finally did hear was catastrophical.

"She is a cousin of the Iron Crown! How can any half-wit allow this to _happen?_"

"Here now, Larucca, no need to get excited," his roommate remarked, casually putting himself between Alex and the unfortunate messenger to inspect his immaculate reflection in a mirror six feet away. The servant, a discreet sort used to his master's temperament, bowed quietly and slipped away.

"No need? That's _my sister _they've packed off into service!" Alex cried, stabbing blindly at the air with the offending fistful of paper. "Service! Like some common mule! To that mudspawn prince of Sanq, no less… _Sanq_, Khushrenada, of all the wretched, flea-bitten, pig farms!"

"An absolute outrage," the lanky, airy, blond agreed, fussing with his cravat. "But I suppose someone ought to make use of all that education, god knows it's lost on the boy.

"Although," he added a touch too glibly, "isn't your mother from Sanq?"

Alex would have liked to rip the smirk off his face, but he already knew from experience that the other boy would win. Despite his girlish wrists and lacy trims, Treize was a skilled boxer, good enough to go up against opponents twice his size and half again his age, so Alex kept his fists to himself and ground his teeth instead.

"Which is why Zita and I cannot afford mistakes such as these!"

Mother seemed happy enough—how could she understand? The complex rules of custom and protocol are not readily apparent to those not born of their higher echelon, nor were they meant to be. To mother, a fork is a fork and dinner is dinner. She does not notice the slights made to her in serving orders or distinguish between heraldic sanguine and gules. She does not see what it means that she shall always be no more than a Lady, while _his_ wife, whoever she may be, would instantly be styled Duchessa; and he hopes for her sake that she never will. The complex family life of the Laruccas was plainly not one to which she had schemed and aspired.

Alex's parents had met one idyllic summer by a certain river in rural Germany. How was she to know that the dreamy-eyed youth with delusions of poetry was the favourite godson of Granduchessa Donatella of the d'Leo-Sanmedici, the most influential force behind the Iron Crown?

But things are not the same for him and Lucrezia. They are legitimate heirs to their father's dukedom, courtesy cousins to the Emperor of the Iron Crown and eighty-sixth and -ninth in line for Imperial succession respectively. Nothing must threaten their socio-political standing, especially in their current vulnerability.

And Vittoria's too, he thought with a pang of guilt. It was difficult to remember that he now has _two_ sisters. Vittoria had been barely three months old when he was sent away, hardly old enough to strike an impression. He cannot even remember the colour of her eyes, he realised. They might as well be strangers.

Treize laughed.

It was a magical laugh that would, in time, grow to be an infamous chuckle capable of disarming politicians and maidenheads alike.

"This is Saint bloody Anthony's, Larucca, nothing you do from here on can be worse than what's already been done for you."

This time, Alex did not hold back.

**.**

There are two kinds of boys at Saint Anthony's Academy for Fine Gentlemen: those who understood their place and those who did not. Alessandro had always considered himself the former.

Father had always promised him a school in Roma, close to home and in the coveted shadow of the Imperial family, going as far as to present Alex with a precious letter of acceptance to the Emperor's own alma mater on his ninth birthday— so imagine the boy's horror when, instead of the magical marble halls of the Emperor's old haunts, he found himself ushered through the tedious arches of some mere academy in a miserable backwater he had never heard of.

Trouble is, despite appearances, Saint Anthony's is not like any other institute. It is its own country, self-contained in six-point-four acres of breathtaking, largely inaccessible hillside and overlooked by every map, nation and alliance in the world. A Neverland referred to only in awkward allusions outside its walls, a repository of lost secrets, itself a better-kept secret of true aristocracy.

Little is known of the founder, Winston Volk. They say that he is ninety-six, though he does not look a day over forty-two. That he is an exiled war hero, a deposed royal, a vampire, a spy, a sorcerer, a fraud, and it may all very well be true.

Here was a man who named himself after a handful of American cigarettes and the moose-hunting Russian wolf, whose legend claims the ability to have turned the tide of the Colony War with a flick of a finger, had he chosen to. The gilded portrait in the Academy's main foyer pictures a stout figure of indeterminate nationality parading an epic salt-and-pepper moustache on an otherwise ordinary face, dark eyes hidden behind clownish, rose-tint teashades, a puffed-chest creature bordering on the ridiculous. Not the kind of man one would expect Emperors and Generals to roll over for at all, but they did.

And this tiny kingdom in the middle of nowhere, his seat of power, if you will, is where the sons of Kings and Emperors, Dukes and Princesses go, if they are lucky, to be forgotten when they are no longer appropriate to the current climes.

Later, someone will question the wisdom of this practice and, perhaps, the ethics; but no one would be able to produce a better solution. Inconvenient children are dangerous things in any polite society. They are leverage for your enemies, handicaps to your position, and are themselves all too prone to inconvenient interests. What else is a responsible parent to do?

**.**

No matter how hectic his days got, there was always time for tea with Katrina.

These were proper adult affairs with real teas and coffees and savoury jellies instead of sodas and ice-creams, served on fine china in the Queen's private garden, and Milliard approached them with due gravity. He took his tea unsweetened, like a man, between the honeydrops Katrina smuggled to him under the table, and carefully rehearsed small talk on such popular grown-up topics as fashion and polity, putting every care into his grooming so as to present himself as a gentleman ready for Court.

"Don't you think he takes things a little too seriously?"

"That's part of his charm, Dennis," Katrina mused behind her teacup. Today she was serving a gold-tipped Assam with rock candy and unstirred cream, the way it was drunk in Bremen when they were young.

Weridge sighed. He tried not to comment on Katrina's parenting in general. After all, he was not a particularly stellar example himself. Elisa, much as he adored his adoptive daughter, was being raised almost entirely by his sister.

Still, despite its overall insignificance, Sanq is a Dominion nation with certain standards and appearances to be maintained, "And between you and Byron, you've just about used up all of our neighbours' tolerance for scandal for the next sixty years."

Katrina smiled.

"You said 'our'."

A lesser man than he would have blushed and sputtered. Weridge's only gesture of discomfort was to run his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair.

"We have been here nearly five years now, Your Majesty," he replied gruffly.

Any other woman might have reached out and touched their fingers to his. Katrina just smiled.

"Thank you, Master Weridge."

And then the prince was upon them and the talk turned to other things.

**.**

The children have been vying over everything possible since their fight in the Salle. The King thought this to be an improvement, and perhaps it was— Lucius had never seen Milliard so lively in a class he had not booby-trapped— but then, Byron Peacecraft did not have to teach in these conditions.

"Algebra's too easy, Lucius. Let's do Binaries."

One of the greatest luxuries of having your own Royal Tutor is the flexibility to change one's syllabus according to one's tastes and whimsies whenever one liked. In an attempt to prove his superiority, Prince Milliard had taken to demanding lessons in ever more complex and bizarre subjects for himself and, by association, his 'Boy' of the Chamber.

"That's just counting in twos," the latter announced smugly.

Lucrezia, in response, had thrown all class propriety out the window and no longer bothered to hold herself respectfully back in either academic performance or etiquette. ("What's the harm?" Byron had laughed. "Isn't it great that Milliard's finally found someone unafraid to challenge him!" But Lucius was concerned that this was no way to bring up a young lady.)

"And I've already learnt to do that. In _Roma_."

It riled the Prince in true child-like fashion that any other country could possibly be considered more advanced than his own in anything, and Lucrezia took great pleasure in baiting him.

It hardly mattered that Roma was not, in fact, in the habit of teaching its five year-olds any computer science. Someone had shown her older brother to count in base-2 and derive a simple secret code from it last winter, and when Alessandro could not keep up with the messages, he taught the code to Lucrezia so that she could do all the grunt-work encryption for him.

"Then we'll read… Differentitals," Milliard recovered with barely a pause.

"That's Algebra with pictures," Lucrezia challenged after a moment's perusal at the topic introduction.

"Fractals."

"Now you're just reading off the Contents!"

The princling shot her a dirty look and started wildly flipping pages. Lucius sighed and resigned himself to another wasted afternoon. It was days of feverishly revising lesson plans to suit these bewildering new interests before he finally caught on and admitted the futility of it… at least, until the children sorted themselves out. It was the business with the dinner menus all over again. Milliard, Lucius had started to fear, was shaping up to be a one-trick pony.

"I'm bored of numbers anyway," His Highness declared, "We're going riding." This was the one thing she could not accompany him on, not having a mount of her own. Skagen Castle kept a limited stable, much too small to provide a child with suitable loan on such short notice, although, Lucius suspected, Byron would have loaned her his own charger just to see the look on Milliard's and his faces.

Lucrezia crossed her arms and chewed irritably on her lip. "Afraid I'll beat you again?"

"You did not beat me! And it's not my fault you can't come," Milliard stuck his tongue out at her in a rude gesture.

Every so often, Lucius Darlian wished his King had had the sense to hire someone actually qualified in child education to tutor his son. He was well-learned, admittedly, but it took a special touch to be a teacher of any respectable description, and Lucius, for all his talent in the study of human knowledge, was simply quite giftless in that regard.

"Make your parents get you your own horse," the boy prattled on, aware only that horses were an expensive commodity and not that the stable's inability to accommodate her was a reflection on his Kingdom's poverty more than anything else. Colour rose to Lucrezia's face.

"Now, your Highness," Lucius interjected inadequately, unsure of whom to be shielding against whom.

"Neo-Lombard horses are much better anyway, but why would they want to leave Roma and come here!"

"Lucrezia!"

"Well, go back to Roma then, if it's so great!"

**.**

Anywhere else, the Headmaster's office would be bursting at its seams with parents, retainers, lawyers and hysterical maiden sisters or aunts, each demanding to be heard Right This Instant. It was a matter of appearances.

Thankfully, this is Saint Anthony's Academy, where many, if not all, of the students came from families who would rather forget they exist.

"What have you to say for yourselves, gentlemen?" Mister Crane peered across folded hands at a pair of ragged boys in what he thought was a suitably intimidating manner. "Who started it?"

The dark-haired one swiped sullenly at the corner of his split lip with a clenched fist and opened his mouth.

"I did, sir, I insulted Larucca's mother. He had no choice but to fight me," the other boy replied.

Crane turned his attention to the blond. "I see," he said, even though he did not.

Both parties will be punished equally, of course, but the unofficial code of the students has always demanded that the defeated child be the one to bear responsibility. And although slightly scuffed and missing some buttons, Treize Khushrenada had clearly been the victor.

"Don't expect me to be grateful," Alex hissed, back in the privacy of their shared room. "I don't need your charity!"

"Not at all," Treize shrugged casually out of his rumpled shirt and began hunting for a fresh one. "I just wanted Crane to write my mother."

Normally, parents of the Academy did not care for communications from Volksland. All fees and allowances are arranged silently through reputable banks such as Swiss Union and Romefeller Universal, and the all correspondence forwarded to anonymous Post Office boxes, to be collected at each parent's discretion. The exception is made for notices of non-payment, graduation and death, and disciplinary issues, particularly ones that involve mention of the other parents. One never knows what secrets these children may carelessly let slip and what feuds one thoughtless angry word may fuel. The parents like to be prepared.

"A disciplinary letter might help her remember my birthday."

"So you set me up? You bastard…!"

"Actually," said the golden-haired boy neatly avoiding his roommate's outraged tackle, "it didn't occur to me until we were outside Crane's office."

Something in the way he said the last made Alex stop.

"When is your birthday?" He asked curiously.

"February." It was a long way to and from February. "It probably won't make a difference," Treize concluded.

Alex sobered and let Treize help him up. "Does she often forget?"

A birthday is a serious occasion for boys of any age. Alex could hardly imagine how it must feel to be neglected by one's own mother on their birthday.

Treize shrugged.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," the other boy clapped him heartily on the back. "It's what happens to all us bastard sons here. They remember the first two if you're lucky, and no one's ever been remembered three years in a row. Now, how about we go to the gym and I show you how to throw a proper punch?"

**...**

**

* * *

A/N**:  
**Italian noble titles** – I opted to go with local language titles so one can more easily tell where a particular individual is ennobled. Duca and Duchessa are Duke and Duchess respectively in Italian, and Granduchess of course being the higher ranked Grand Duchess.  
**Skagen Castle** – one of the distractions these past months has been trying to figure out exactly where the Sanq Kingdom and, thus young Milliard's home, is. If you choose to subscribe to my reality, it is in Skagen, Denmark, the Northernmost point of Denmark where I shall one day spend inspired summers and finally complete my original material. We'll get back to why Relena's Sanq was obviously in Greece one day.

**Glossary**:  
_nouveau titre _– French, in the fashion of "nouveau riche", literally "new title".

**Flower Language** **花言葉****:  
**In Japan, **Zinnia** is also known as the Hundred Day Grass (hyakunichisou百日草), and its language is "_kizuna_"絆, the ties between people. It is the birthflower of, among other things, the day NASA's Phoenix was launched, and classically regarded as "thoughts for absent friends".


	6. Chapter 4: Physalis

**「****The Secret Life of Gardenias****」**

**「**December, 181: Invitation, Please – Physalis**」**

…

The sun danced and sparkled across the Kattegat like a carpet of brilliant blue gems. From this altitude, one could scarcely see the ever-present turbulence where it repelled the Skagerrak's invading waves or the violence with which it tore at Skagen's shores. High in the cloudless sky, a single airshuttle skated across the horizon, the blue winged-earth crest of the United Earth Sphere Alliance blazoned across its wings and tail against bold green stripes.

There were two men in the leather-and-oak passenger cabin: a slightly green-looking wisp of a man and a stalwart Allied Armies General. Across the modest space, in her own fabulously appointed booth, sat Ambassador Romefeller, a beautiful woman in a severe pink suit, clearly their superior in every way.

The amber liquid in her delicately stemmed wine glass lapped alarmingly at its edge as the shuttle veered towards its target trajectory. Arthur Noventa was a better pilot than he gave himself credit for. In the entire time she has flown with him, he has never once so much as jostle a landing and it gave her some measure of pleasure to show it off. A stack of loose folders on her desk skidded to the right. The Ambassador sipped from her glass and straightened them with the same absent cool, apparently distracted by the scenic country below, drawing a derisive snort from the General loud enough to startle their mutual colleague.

The northernmost arm of the Dansk peninsula was a dappled expense of velvety boreal grass. A massive limestone fault stretched across it like a glistening, writhing scar, a livid reminder of some long-ago geo-nuclear disaster half a world away in another age, and cradled in its crook was a small wasteland of sand fine as powder and pale as honeyed cream, where once, there was a church.

It must not have been a very important church because no-one remembered it was there until some silly young man cartwheeled into its buried steeple while trying to impress some girl, so the story goes. Many years later, he returned to that spot and, for whatever reasons, dug up the steeple and the bell-tower under it and built himself a house in its place. The house became a fort, the fort became a castle.

Despite her love for the view, Melusina Romefeller was not a fan of Skagen Castle. It was plebeian and artless, in her view, lacking in vision and imagination, like so much about the sovereignty it housed. Generations of Peacecrafts have added to it according to their changing needs and vanities and little consideration towards architectural fashion or even, in some cases, a coherent style. What was not cut from the nearby rockface had been pilfered from forgotten places around the planet by whimsical pirate kings with a taste for fancy domes and antique weapons installations, connecting empty silos and colourful cupolas with Cistercian arcades and atria in a sprawling compound that more closely resembled the homebase of a clan of eccentric warrior monks than the palace of a Royal House of the European Dominions.

There were no gardens to speak of, only brisk, manicured patches of native flora scattered throughout the grounds, subject to the mercies of the Northern sky; and though she used to find it charming and more preferable to the painstakingly curated displays in the climate-controlled parks of her childhood Schloss Charlottenburg, she has since shed the magical innocence of young girls in love and saw it plainly now as a kingdom too limited to spend her resources on taming her environment and a king too naive to realise the message that sends.

The guest hanger with its retracting stained-glass roof was new. The last time she was here, visiting aircraft were still expected to use the main castle driveway as an airstrip. She was further surprised to be received almost immediately from the shuttle with a proper assembly of staff and flair, especially given the lack of notice she had accidentally-on-purpose neglected to send. Even with plenty of warning in the most expensive nations, it was not unusual to be kept waiting a full twenty to forty minutes for one's hosts to prepare a decent reception.

But Enrique Catalonia was unaffected, being the sort of man only capable of understanding violence and opulence. How such a man came to hold a diplomatic post was a mystery to her, although, Melusina had to admit, he was an exceptionally good stick. On the most part, the higher societies were content to regard him as a bodyguard and he, well… as long as Enrique continued to be addressed as a General and bowed to by the servants, she wasn't entirely sure he'd notice.

Ken Tsubarov alighted next, out of turn and hard on the General's heels with the disposition of a nervous puppy suddenly thrust upon unfamiliar surroundings. Ironic, considering he was the most prolific visitor to Sanq Kingdom in recent years out of the shuttle's passengers and the real proponent of this expedition.

Melusina Romefeller Prinzessin Khushrenada, United Earth Sphere Alliance Ambassador to the European Dominions and Second Princess of the now dead Empire of Deutschland, paused at the top of the airstairs and waited for her moment before gliding down the carpeted steps, onto the sovereign soil of Sanq.

"Lucy, _liebling_, you should have called ahead," the Sanqere Queen approached immediately with open arms, chiding her fondly like an errant favourite child, but Melusina turned ever so slightly and took several steps with her perfect porcelain hand extended towards the King instead. One might well think she thought Katrina invisible, except for the way her eyes darted, constantly stealing sharp secret glances at the latter.

"Byron Peacecraft, how delightful to see you again!" She curtsied deeply, flawlessly.

"_Willkommen, Prinzessin_." Byron smiled, enveloping her hand in a light courtly kiss. "You are as radiant as ever,"

"_Nein, bitte_," she replied in a short, flippant laugh, just a slight touch too shrill, "I am no longer a princess, only a faithful servant of the Alliance."

"Madam," he protested gravely, dropping another kiss on those delicate fingertips, "you will always be a princess to me."

The beautiful blonde blushed prettily and tittered despite herself, dizzy and delighted. "Flatterer!" she exclaimed and snaked her arms around Byron's elbow with the familiarity of old lovers.

If Katrina noticed, she showed no sign of it. "General Catalonia, Mister Tsubarov," she greeted the others warmly, gliding gracefully past her husband and sister without a glance or care. "Congratulations on your daughter, General. How is your father? It's been far too long. I simply adore the pictures Emillie sent along."

Enrique Catalonia bowed a little to her and mumbled a pleasantry in reply, to the shock of his companions.

"And you, Mister Tsubarov," she smiled enigmatically, "welcome back. We do hope to see you _at_ the Ball this year."

**...**

A festive bustle permeated the castle as the days counted down to its coldest and shortest and the smell of sweet pie fillings took over all but the airiest hallways. Maids scurried along with a waltzing spring in their steps and stewards took every possible opportunity to peek in on the kitchen. Young men and women blushed and smiled at the slightest provocations and talk everywhere turned towards party plans, ballroom fashion, and who's-seen-what-where. The Queen's Starlight Ball was _the_ event on every Sanqere's calendar.

Once a year, on the anniversary of Byron Peacraft the Third's first marriage, the castle plays host to a lavish three-day affair culminating in an open-air costume ball that rivalled the most prestigious parties in all the Dominions. Once a year, lords and ladies from all over the Earth Sphere who would not normally spare any thought towards this particular little corner of the Europe, vied bitterly for a place at the Peacecrafts' table, sparing no expense at catching their attention. And for those three magical days every year, through some grand ineffability, the tiny pacifist kingdom of Sanq became the centre of the civilised world.

Dennis Weridge, Master Swordsman and Gentleman of the Realm, hated it.

It wasn't just that he was allergic to the extravagances of the rich or that it was his sister's favourite excuse to ambush him with potential wives. For seventy-two mad hours every year, Skagen Castle becomes a public tourist attraction freely accessible to a horde of costumed strangers and masked rivalries, each one a potential assassin for any of the castle's residents or guests, not to mention all the usual political intrigues and headaches sure to follow wherever people of a certain social strata go. The whole thing was one monstrous security nightmare.

"And what in God's name does the Alliance want here?" He glowered darkly from a service landing overlooking the Alliance welcome. "As if we do not have enough to worry about, now the little princess too—nothing good can come of this."

"Maybe she came because she missed the Kaiserin," his conversation partner, a weathered old man hunched over the banister in the dirty grey jumpsuit worn by the castle's garage staff, dragged calmly on his cigarette. "She is her sister."

"_Half_-sister," Weridge hissed belligerently. "All the more reason to watch our backs, or have you already forgotten?"

A troubled and often bloody history spanned between Melusina and Katrina for a little longer than either have been alive, as has always been the case for those born to the throne of Imperial Deutschland, the Bloodiest Seat of Eurasia. There were easily a dozen motivations for murder there on any given day. Power, revenge, jealousy, boys... it was, at the heart of things, the reason their empire was no more.

The engineer laughed.

"They're sisters, _Bursche_, who's to say what's really between them?"

**.**

The first thing Melusina did when left to her own devices was draw a scalding bath. They'd put her in her old rooms, the ones she used to live in when she used to visit Skagen Castle a different lifetime ago, where various portraits of her between ages five and twenty-five lived year-round in exquisite handcrafted frames on the walls. The most recent ones picture her with a sylphic boy with deep blue eyes the colour of the cloudless morning sky on the best day of your life. She flinched.

It was good for her to get away from Roma once in a while. All that talk in the cities about colonial conspiracy and the Ermanno Larucca's children was getting to her head, making her paranoid, so much so that although Treize clearly had her hair, her nose, her cheeks, her perfect aristocratic jaw, even her family's square brow, all she could see in the boy's face was his father.

Melusina never learnt to like children, those fussy, squirmy, squealing attention whores. It would be simplest to say Treize's father was the only man she'd ever loved enough to beg for a baby from, and that was what she'd told her sister at the time, but the reality was that she did not know why she did it and still doesn't, ten years on. He would not have been considered a high value conquest in her teenaged games of love. These days, if he were still alive, she would have written him off without a second's thought. The Deutsche Princess' men were all men of exceptional substance and dreamers did not count amongst them, however successful they got at it or how great a lover they prove to be.

Maybe she just wanted a baby? This baby, any baby, something beyond anyone else's claim or control. Whatever the case, it was not within her personality to ponder such things. She sank into the water and let those thoughts melt away.

Byron's kiss lingered on the back of her hand. Katya must be livid, she smirked. Her sister has never liked her getting close to the Sanqere King, or any other man, for that matter. Katrina may have worn the crown, but it was well-known that it was Melusina who was the prettier and better loved of the two, to whom many an eligible (and some less) gentleman paid court; including a rakish young Byron Peacecraft the Third to whom Katrina had, at the time, been engaged.

There had been such an uproar, Melusina was surprised Byron survived and more so that he still dared to wed her sister years later. Katya had a temper and an extremely well-justified reputation for violence, much at odds with the docile atmosphere of her new home. How anyone who has experienced the thrills and bustle of life in old Berlin or Roma could stand to box themselves away in Skagen Castle is beyond her and it bothered her how well Katya, once Catherina Vera-Stella von Deutschland, the Devil of Berlin, seems to have settled in, "settling" being the operative term.

Sanq Kingdom was one of those bothersome places that maintained their sovereignty unchallenged because their neighbours could not be bothered to annex them. Perched precariously on one of the more hostile backdoors to the continent, it had no relevant resources, no geo-political influence, and no cultural significance to those who do not trace their lineages back to the Peacecraft mercenaries. Its chief industry revolved around an average quality pork that formed the backbone of the Sanqere diet as well as its modest economy, hardy and unassuming, just like the locals, and just as lacking in any definitive characteristics that may be mistaken for a national identity. Its King was a callous lout whose head she could turn as easily as breathing and who continues to publicly celebrate his marriage to a dead colony secretary despite having been re-married these past four years to an Empress of the Deutsche Imperial line. What about this all could possibly interest a woman who'd ascended to the top of an empire by age eighteen and singlehandedly fended her place there for fifteen years?

Analysts were quick to call "burnout", but Melusina refused to buy it. Monsters like her sister do not know how pressure feels nor how to crumble under it. They were cleverer and more insidious than that, indubitably heartless, and indomitably sublime; in no way possibly content to disappear into history as acquiescent country queens whose chief interests, according to their Social Pages, were gardening and tea. Certainly, if it weren't for that, she would never have entertained "Krackpot" Tsubarov's wild ideas of treasure under Skagen Castle.

It wouldn't be gold or riches, although the Peacecrafts' ancestors were pirates and that would therefore be the most probable outcome. No, it would have to be something better, more compelling, something so fantastic that the most powerful woman in the eastern Dominions would not think twice to abandon everything she had, and everything she has ever fought for all her life, in order to pursue.

She had to find out what it was.

**.**

Elise Weridge trembled over the over-gilded card shedding gold and silver glitter all over her dress. The poor thing was terrified, even though she said nothing of it. Her aunt had been quite clear as to what was deemed an appropriate reaction to the Prince's expectations, and it did not involve blubbing or tears. And anyway, that is not what a Mars Knight would do— so she bit her lip and curtsied with her head hung low while Lady Weridge fussed and swooned over what a charming little chevalier Milliard was and how honoured and excited they all were that he was taking Elise to the ball.

"Auntie wants to frame it and hang it over my bed," she mewed miserably to her friends as the older Knights of Mars huddled together around a round wood table down in the far corner of the kitchen courtyard, prodding gingerly at the hand-made invitation with horrified fascination.

"What if you lose it?" The rotund boy plumped out further in a fringed knit scarf and two layers of winter coats tried helpfully. That strategy has worked fairly well for him thus far in dealing with embarrassing presents from his extended family.

"Gah! Not even a magpie would want that thing," Spencer, burly heir to the Sanqere barony of Saksun, retorted with a sharp, dismissive laugh. "Just tell him no way, and if he won't accept, get your dad to teach him a lesson!"

"Spencer, he's the Prince!"

"So? Her dad's his martial instructor. That's like a free pass to kicking his ass!"

Thomas Feenly, eldest and most common (and therefore most worldly) of the group sighed at the pale uncertainty on Elise's face. "We can't ask her father to go around beating kids up just because we don't like them," he said pointedly to Spencer. Spencer had not always been liked by the children of Skagen Castle, and some of them still remember why.

"Fine, we'll do it ourselves," the bully proposed, exasperated. "I can take him. And we're kids, so they'll call it roughhousing and let us get away with it if you guys'll back me up."

"It's still treason," quiet, aloof Alain pointed out. "As long as we are subjects of Sanq, it counts."

"Okay, so that leaves Dimitri and Luc," Spencer carried on, unwilling to let go of the opportunity, any opportunity, to get in a fight. "We'll say one of them did it, better?— Where is Luc anyway?"

"I didn't tell her," Elise finally confessed after a round of guilty reflection on when each of them had last seen or spoken to their 'Captain'. "I don't know how to."

Perhaps it was the effect of her recent Lady-in-Waiting training, Elise realised vaguely that this was really more about hurting Lucrezia, their leader, than anything else, even though she couldn't really understand it. Luc would, being a sophisticated Ladyship from Roma and all, but then asking Luc would defeat the point of keeping it from her, and Elise was determined to protect her from Prince Milliard's latest cruelty.

**.**

General Catalonia of the United Earth Sphere Allied Armies poured a stiff drink from the sideboard and quickly drained it before anyone had the chance to ruin it for him. On one hand, he was glad to be away from Roma and her compulsive obsession with gossip and conspiracies. What does it matter whose blood runs in whose veins in this day and age? Given the chance, he would happily rid himself of Dominion politics altogether. On the other, as long as he had those like his father hanging over his head, it seems it would be some time before he can truly escape those insipid operatics.

The Eurasian continent has been its own closed-off political and cultural sphere since the Harmony War in the first half of the first After Colony century, absurdly, so its native countries could fight their own wars without "outside" interference. It was only in the last five years or so, with all other earth territories finally united unanimously under the Alliance flag that the spotlight was turned back on its part of the world. Four years ago, Colonel Dermail Solada paraded a dazzling display of the Alliance's most advanced commercial and military technology before the Dominions' top echelons in hopes of enticing them out of isolation. It did not go well. At the end of the presentation, he was pointed at a titleless businessman, titles being everything in the Dominions' social hierarchy system, who brought him to his factory on the outskirts of the city, and the Earth Sphere was forever changed.

Enrique will never forget the look on his father's face when he first saw a Leo suit. It was four times the size of anything the Alliance built save multi-personnel vessels, versatile for a wide range of purposes from construction to deep space retrieval —and yes, military— and adaptable to land, air and space. The Europeans called them Mobile Suits, and they were what the Allied Armies' bleeding edge exoskeletal Battlesuits could only dream of becoming, like a five-year old dreams of becoming an astronaut.

Instead of drawing the Dominion nations out into the united earth community, the united earth community poured into the Dominions. Respectable men and women turned themselves into clowns for a chance at any Dominion rank or title, even to the extent of forsaking familial ties. People who have never been to any of the Dominion countries started to adopt their syntax and concerns. Fashion, cuisine, media, politics, entertainment; in four short years, without breaking their isolation policies, without even bothering to negotiate a united front, the Dominions successfully infected and conquered the earth. The earth just hadn't realised it yet.

A large part of it, Enrique suspects, has to do with money.

The war on the colonies was bankrupting the Alliance and people were starting to notice. A hundred and twenty years of isolationism had made the Dominions, collectively, the strongest economy on the planet. Of course, the Dominions were too refined and stiff-necked to bankroll the Alliance. They did not, however, restrict their merchants from conducting business across continental borders and of these merchants, the Romefeller Foundation, owner of the factory where Alliance leaders first saw the future of the Earth Sphere, was currently the most successful. In return for the Foundation's fiscal and political support, the United Earth Sphere Alliance granted it a certain degree of leverage towards its private interests and goals. It would not be too far off the mark to consider it the new owner of the United Earth Sphere Allied Armies, although it would certainly be an executionable offence to say so.

Men like Dermail embraced this. The Romefeller Foundation was their best opportunity at amassing personal power in the emerging world order, once they have accepted the inevitability of a Dominion-led society. The Dominions collectively own a good third of the planet, and have done so for longer than most of the United Earth Sphere Alliance's member administrations have existed. That they choose to adopt a low-tech country lifestyle should not be mistaken to mean that they did not have the capabilities, as Dermail found out, and the Alliance still had no clue as to the true reach of Dominion scientific superiority. Without Romefeller as their intermediary, no-one from outside the Alliance would have been warranted any attention in Dominion eyes. So men like Enrique, good-looking soldiers of some arguably arbitrary pedigree, were honorarily promoted to puffed-up posts and relegated to standing pretty at poncy parties and babysitting the maniacs the Foundation sent to "further their mutual goals".

The Europeans on the whole were fairly pleasant and not that different from everyone else, he found, but the aristocracy that made up their ruling class... take his fellow emissaries for example. Tsubarov had brought his own sealed supply of food and water, madly convinced that the Sanqere routinely drug their guests, and that simpering Romefeller woman was the source of half the scandals flooding Roma right now. He wished he could say these two were the exception not the norm, sadly, that would be a lie. His wife Lady Emillie Catalonia, a distant titled heiress of some dukedom or another arranged for him by his father and to whom he has had to surrender the Solada name, was a fervent proponent of something called a Social Page that publicly chronicled every flippant passing fancy of those who thought themselves somebody in Dominion social circles on the internet, complete with pictures.

Enrique wasn't thrilled about it; a man should have his privacy. But as with most things that kept her happy, particularly since they've had Dorothy, he stayed out of it. It's what he's been trained to do.

**.**

"How's your waltz, Larucca?"

An awkward head of slept-in black hair peeked uncertainly around the corner from the bathroom in Room 13-K. At home he was Lord Alessandro, son of Duca Ermanno and heir to his House and titles. Here he was merely Alex Larucca, latest addition to the Saint Anthony's Academy for Fine Gentleman. Where the former would have launched into a boastful embellishment of his many qualifications on the subject, Alex has learnt to get by with a cautious "Well enough. Why?"

Another boy sat, statuesque, at the table they shared in the centre of the room, reading a rare piece of mail with an elegant lack of expression. The school's postal service is generally wasted on the Academy's students, being as most families were only too happy to be rid of the inconveniences they politely called their children and move on with their lives.

"I've been summoned to a costume ball," he said without looking up.

"And you need someone to teach you the waltz?" Alex smirked, equally satisfied and surprised to hear that there was something Treize Khushrenada could not naturally do.

"Not exactly," Treize replied mildly, stuffing the richly embossed piece of paper back into its fancy envelope with unusual carelessness. "I thought you'd like to go in my place."

And prance around like a giddy five year-old in some ridiculous poofy costume? "Not a chance," Alex chortled. "Who's asking you?"

"Ambassador Romefeller."

"Romefeller the TV guy? 'See The World Through My Eyes'?" Alex hummed the well-known jingle. Orri Romefeller owned television, an incidental that the industrial tycoon spared no opportunities to advertise. Everyone who has ever spent any time in front of a television set knew his face and name. Why would he write to Treize?

"No, the Alliance Ambassador, his wife—" Treize explained. A shadow of a snarl twitched in the corner of his eye and was gone in an instant "—my mother."

And the reason Treize was at Saint Anthony's. Children are a socialite's greatest liability when trying to land rich, influential husbands such as the head and founder of the preeminent Romefeller Foundation. Alex would feel bad for him except, given the particular type of place Saint Anthony's was, being sacrificed by your family for greater social mobility was so passé.

"Wouldn't dream of being in your shoes," Alex grinned wickedly. In the eyes of ten year-olds, the only thing worse than going to an embarrassing party is turning up with your parents.

"Are you sure?" Treize slid the opened letter across the table at his roommate just a tad too smugly. "It's in Sanq."

**.**

"I'm running away, Lucius," a small, earnest face framed in soft inky locks announced. "It's only fair to warn you."

Lucius closed his eyes and opened them slowly again on the off-chance that she was some kind of anxiety hallucination. It wasn't. The little girl with the fiendishly purple eyes was still there, perched cat-like against his shoulder, commanding his entire field of vision with an uncanny stare.

"Why?" He muttered groggily, which she mistook to be a question.

"So you wouldn't worry and think something bad's happened to me when they tell you I'm gone, of course!"

"When?" Lucius groaned, wondering if it was worth the trouble getting out of bed this morning. All things considered, it probably wasn't. On top of the childish hijinks of his cousin and her antagonist, Ken Tsubarov was expected to descend upon the castle any day now on his annual crazed hunt, for what he would never say, and it was Lucius Darlian, Bart.'s job to herd and clean up after them all.

"I can't tell you that," she seemed genuinely apologetic. "But you should probably find someone else to take you to the ball."

So before, if not during, the Starlight Ball. "And where would you go?" He sighed.

"Well, obviously I can't tell you that either," she made a disapproving little face at him. Not that she needed to, Lucrezia Larucca has made no secret of her ambitions to seek out her brother at school and serve at his side until one day they can both return home to Roma proudly as elite Scholar-Knights. "Honestly Lucius, you have to think for yourself sometimes. I won't always be around to look out for you~"

"Why not?"

She had no answer.

"What about your friends? And Milliard? What about your deal with the King?"

"It is very regrettable," Lucrezia replied with a barrage of very large, well memorised words, "but I have to do what's best for me and a clever man knows when he must concede to an insurmountable circumstance while only the fool insists on miring himself in a futile conundrum. I'm clearly not getting anything out of being saddled with that _stronzo_,"

"Lucrezia!"

"It's the truth!" An indignant little pout scrunched her nose into a pinkish pumpkin. "I know we're supposed to be nice about the Royalty and all, and they're supposed to be the absolutes, but he's not _my_ Prince and his father's not _my_ King. You can't expect people to cherish and obey all the Royals everywhere, it just wouldn't make sense!"

"But this is your home now, doesn't that count?"

"No!" The little girl cried, launching herself off his pillow and onto the carpeted bedroom floor with all the vicious ferocity of a stung cat. "My home is Roma! I am a daughter of Neo-Lombardia under the Iron Crown! And as soon as Mamma gets better she will come get me! I will never be a subject of Sanq!"

She regretted it almost immediately, once she'd calmed down. Flying off into a tantrum was not a dignified grown-up thing to do at any age. That went doubly so for a Lady of a noble House under the Iron Crown, and Lucius did not deserve it. Regardless of what she thought of Milliard or his kingdom, it was Lucius' home and she should not have been so rude about it. Besides, he didn't know any better. How could he? He'd spent all her life cooped up in one country castle far away from anyone or thing really important and could not possibly understand the weight and honour of belonging to a great nation like her beloved Neo-Lombardia.

But by then it was too late, she was already somewhere over the Kattegat, past the usual watchful eyes of the castle, well on her way to freedom and adventure. She had no idea how to turn back now, even if she wasn't too proud to do so. That's the problem with sneaking away on the first shuttle one sees, especially when one is in too much of a state to stop and find out who was on it and where they were going.

The sticky bitter smell of petrol seeped into everything in the cramped cargo hold. Lucrezia clapped her hands over her nose and breathed heavily through her sleeves. She needed to stay angry, but it was tiring sitting still all crouched like that and the fumes made her dizzy. By the time she was discovered twenty minutes later, she could no longer remember why.

**...**

* * *

**A/N:**

_Physalis Alekengi_, the **Chinese Lantern Plant** (although ironically originating from Japan), is interpreted in Japanese as "Natural Beauty", "Peace of Mind", "Fascination", "Please Invite Me", "Unreliable", "Skeptical", "Falsehoods" and "Deception" and carries a cultural interpretation as "guidance for the dead". The GP02 Gundam from Stardust Memories carries its name and is piloted by Anavel Gato who is voiced by Otsuka Akio, who in turn narrates Gundam Wing, among other such roles as Vice Foreign Minister Darlian, Solid Snake and clones, Ansem the Seeker of Darkness, and Ghost in the Shell's Batou.

_Invitation Please_ – this refrain echoes in my head from the Seramyu song "Set Me Free - Hitomi wa Sora e" (opening number to the 10th Anniversary show) through this part of the story: "人は優しいものと信じたい/ 約束も無い街 少しの恋を乗り継ぎ/ 繰り返し 繰り返し アア 生きている/ ホントは私も強くはないし I want to believe that people are kind/ Connect the town that holds no promises with a little love/ Over and over, that's life!/ Truth is I'm not strong either".

**Glossary:**

_Liebling_ – German, lit. "Darling"

_Willkommen, Prinzessin_ – German, lit. "Welcome, Princess"

_Bursche _– German, "boy", or "student"; used here as a pseudo-Germanic "young padawan".


	7. Chapter 5: Selenicereus

**「****The Secret Life of Gardenias****」**

**「**December, 181: The Pathos of Time and Mortal Things – Selenicereus**」**

…

Lucrezia crouched behind an unattended tool cart. No-one looking at her would suspect her of being a lady. She'd found some thick pants by raiding the Prince's closet and made hobo gloves for herself by snipping the tips off a pair of old woolly ones; her father would be horrified. To complete the outfit, she wore two of the plainest, least girlish blouses she had under her favourite canary yellow sweater and a Lotus laser blue coat that she just could not bear to leave behind, even though its distinctive colour was liable to get her identified.

The cart was too heavy to move, so she couldn't use it for mobile cover. She'd thought about hiding under a tarp in the bottom tray and waiting for someone to unwittingly take her to whatever shuttle they were next working on, but then it occurred to her that one, she had no idea when that would happen, and two, any guest vehicle undergoing maintenance at the castle was likely not to be leaving any time soon. That leaves the crude option of finding anything with wings and an open door and dashing on board before anyone notices— and there it was!

The trick was not to think about how exposed she was. She sucked in a deep breath and scampered across the concrete. Past the tool cart, past the forklift, past the two mechanics pouring over a tablet with their backs turned to her, creep up the gangway and into... hn.

She stopped in front of the sloping hull in the tail end of the cabin and looked around. It looked a lot bigger from afar. There were no seats. Two planks bolted to either sides served as benches and an open hatch in the middle of the floor led to the cargo. The front of the cabin opened directly into the cockpit which was a lot more modern, but didn't give her any room to hide.

She'd expected there to be a bathroom, she's never known a place without one. It would have been the perfect hiding spot, easy to defend and hold as hostage over the rest of the crew, should it come to that, and easy to make excuses with if she needs. There's no good reason to doubt why someone was in a bathroom. In case anyone asked, she'd already scripted an excellent story of how she desperately had to use one in the midst of a hostile game of hide-and-seek and accidentally fell asleep waiting for the seeker to leave the hanger.

Well, beggars can't be choosers. Who knows when her next opportunity would be? The cargo hold will do, so long as no-one thought to look in there until they land.

**.**

No-one paid any attention to the old pot-bellied seaplane leaving the castle, mostly because it really wasn't anything worth worrying about. Everyone knows it's Ken Tsubarov sneaking off to Romefeller Foundation's old archaeological dig again, just as he did last year, and the year before, and every year since the Foundation lost interest in his research and shut down the project. Of course, no-one told him so. Ken Tsubarov paid well for discretion, or, in his case, the illusion thereof.

The conflicts of the pre-Colony age spawned some truly amazing things that flashed across the landscape with incredible ingenuity and just as quickly burnt themselves out when history proved too fragile to handle its reality, leaving behind the odd fragment for the future to puzzle over. The space elevator, the Augmented Rail Cannon, the heuristically programmed algorithmic computer... and what the Dominions found eight years ago, under the castellated sea cliffs of Vestmanna Island, on the outskirts of Sanq.

Tucked in amongst the fjords and accessible only by foot during the lowest tides, was a cavern Tsubarov could only think to describe as a mass grave for what appeared to be an early attempt at Mobile Suits, far ahead the level of technological ingenuity and sophistication anyone'd expected from something buried more than two hundred years ago.

A stern inscription molten deep into the ceiling arched crudely across the stone:

_Lag hier Talgeister_

_Nicht mehr unser Himmel verdunkeln_

— Lay here, valley-spirits, darken our skies no more.

None of the units were intact; it would be unusual to find them that way. Human nature would not allow perfectly good weapons to go undisturbed for long and these broken, battle-scarred machines lying in crumbling blackened heaps of dying metal were definitely built for war.

Armed with its discovery, the Romefeller Foundation launched into the Mobile Suits business. Insights gleaned from the relics pointed the way to faster, lighter designs that were cheaper and easier to produce than anything else on the market, prompting a new era in Mobile Suit architecture that quickly made them the undisputed leader of the industry. But there was only so much that they could learn from scraps and the head of the Foundation, Orri Romefeller, was neither a patient nor sentimental man. As soon as it became clear that the project had reached its limit, his interest waned and the Foundation moved on to other things.

Tsubarov couldn't. He was on the wrong side of fifty and had nothing else to show for it. Vestmanna was his one chance at going down in history. His pride, his reputation, his legacy, everything depended on it. It was he who boasted publicly that he would produce a fully functioning replica of the ancient war machines within eighteen months. He had been making that promise for three years by the time the Foundation pulled the plug— it has been four more since then. Although he has seen some success in the 06-LEO and 09-PISCES units, there have been many more dead ends and none of the viable models were true to the Vestmanna design. His credibility was in tatters and his spirits were not far behind. He must not fail. He cannot. It consumed him.

He became convinced that what they had found was not of earthly origins, and of a secret society operating in the shadows of the Foundation and Skagen Castle to sabotage his attempts at proving it. He was not entirely wrong.

The Foundation had an understanding with Skagen Castle: every year, when Tsubarov inevitably took his annual vacation in Sanq, it fell to the castle and its denizens to contain his exploits and keep him from causing public embarrassment to the Foundation, who in turn provided their kingdom with secret concessions on fuel and energy, which small countries like Sanq depended almost entirely on the Foundation for; because Ken Tsubarov was truly gifted in the science of robotics engineering despite his inconvenient delusions and it was easier and ultimately more profitable to run a continuous cover-up for his madness than admit that the lead architect on their flagship product was a raving alien conspiracy theorist nut.

The old man watching her from the opposite side of the cabin did not seem mad or crazy at all, to Lucrezia. He looked like he didn't like to fly.

It also seemed like he didn't know how to talk to children, although he was very kind about letting her out and giving her blankets and warm tea as soon as he discovered her choking on fumes in his cargo compartment. The tea was gritty and tasteless and came in a handle-less cup made entirely of metal, the kind she'd only ever seen in adventuring books. He must be a real explorer from really far away, she thought to herself. Maybe he'll take her as his apprentice in trade for her passage to Luxemburg. Maybe Alex and her can both be his apprentices and wander the universe, never having to worry about things like where they would call 'home'.

"Are you a spy?" He asked finally.

The little girl blinked, confused. "No."

"Do you know who I am?"

She shook her head.

He might have scowled, though it could have been a trick of the light. Tsubarov stood up and went back into the cockpit. The plane started to dive. Curious, Lucrezia gulped down the last of her tea and plastered her face to the nearest window.

There wasn't much to see besides rocks and sky and sea. The sky was a tired, lumpy grey, not the kind of sky that goes with a grand, life-changing adventure. The ground was mostly an arid olive-yellow broken up in places by piles of speckled rock, rising out of the dirty, foamy waves of the Norwegian Sea. A stout, grey building stood alone in the grass, dormant and nondescript. The little craft dipped and wobbled, then tried to land in a disturbing series of rattles, skids and thumps that sent Lucrezia tumbling so hard she promised herself she would never fly without a safety belt again.

Tsubarov re-emerged struggling with a large silver briefcase, his face even more pinched and pale than before.

"Stay here," he said gruffly to his stowaway. "I'm leaving the door open for you for air. If you're not here when I get back, I'll leave without you."

He didn't know what else to do with her. He should have turned back and gotten rid of her as soon as he'd found her squirrelled away in the cargo compartment under the cabin floor, but the attention that would have attracted would surely have ruined his plans for the rest of the day, if not the entire trip, and he was too close to his goals to let a little thing like that get in his way.

He had barely taken ten paces when something small and nosy jumped noisily off the plane.

Tsubarov kept walking. "There's nothing on this island," he shouted crossly over his shoulder. "If you don't get back in the plane I'm leaving you behind!"

It was a humid day on the cliffs and the forty-foot trek from his landing spot to the old research building left him breathless and sticky. The front door screeched painfully on neglected hinges, announcing his arrival to a flock of black-and-white seabirds roosting on the roof that scattered in a flurry of furious whistles and shrieks. He left it open, for the air, and headed off in search of the generator room with a keychain flashlight the size of his thumb. A moment later, the facility flickered to life, filling its walls with artificial light and musty air conditioning, and a laborious rumbling underfoot.

She was standing in the doorway when he returned, hanging shyly on to the frame.

"You didn't ask my name," she announced nervously in a stubborn little voice determined not to waver, "it's Lucrezia. I'm seeking my fortune."

"Have you found it yet?"

"No," she admitted, but the light in her eyes when they caught his was calm and steady. "But no-one ever found anything by staying still."

A smile twitched on Tsubarov's thin lips for reasons he did not quite understand himself. It was not an attractive thing; he had the sort of face that made every other expression look like a grimace or an evil smirk. Lucrezia didn't seem to mind.

"Well, stay close then. I won't help you if you get lost."

She nodded solemnly and picked her way carefully after him through the abandoned reception and mundane office hallways, to a concrete room with retractable ceilings and a huge elevator with only two buttons.

The noise resonating throughout the empty building was the elevator hauling itself up to ground level. The black button sent them down, so the red must take them back up. A tiny metal plaque bolted to the floor next to her feet read 'Property of Romefeller Archaeology Inc.'. Lucrezia fidgeted, craning her neck every which way to take in everything she can. It was a long way down and the old man was not a very forth-coming tour guide.

"Are you a Tomb-raider?" She asked finally, when there ran out of things to look at.

Tsubarov tensed. "No," he snapped.

"I think you are," she persisted, the way children do. They were heading underground in an abandoned archaeology facility, most probably without anyone knowing. What else would he be? "Have you seen a mummy? Or a god? Are we looking for treasure?"

"No, I haven't," he answered, all starch and bristles. "I'm a scientist. We look for answers, not treasure."

"Answers are a kind of treasure,"

He glared, but his disdain was no match for her belligerent childish logic. "Fine, I'm a scientist looking for treasure in the form of answers."

"What kind of answers?"

"Answers are answers, they don't have 'kinds'."

"Sure they do," she shrugged, helpfully started counting them out on her fingers. "There's the kind for making people worry and the kind for keeping them happy, then there's the kind that makes everything make sense and the kind that doesn't explain anything even though it's true, the kind that makes you right and the kind that makes everyone wrong... lots of kinds."

Fortunately the elevator stopped and Lucrezia bounded out onto a metal walkway, the conversation aborted in favour of new things to discover.

Tsubarov followed her into a natural cavern lined with a network of tarnished metal scaffolds. Open mechanised baskets ferried people between levels in place of stairs. Below them, another set of elevator doors provided easy access upwards from the cavern floor, although anyone arriving from above would have to alight on the walkway level and check in at the guards' desk before descending any further. Yellow emergency bulbs lit the immediate area. To get any more light he would have to turn on the power generators down here, which seems a waste for the sake of a man and a child.

Tsubarov leaned into the closest railing and peered into the dimness, searching for the shadow of the largest wreck. Lucrezia's footsteps clanged and echoed sharply in his ears as she darted eagerly around, conjuring memories of when this place was lit bright as day around the clock and bustled with interns and researchers on every platform. This was his kingdom, once.

A pair of little hands appeared next to his on the railing, then a little face trying to fit between the bars.

"What's down there?"

He groped for a moment, looking for an answer, and finally settled on a quiet, almost regretful, "The question."

**...**

**A/N**:

**Selenicereus**, Queen of the Night, or "Beauty By Moonlight _Gekka Bijin_" in Japanese is a gigantic head-sized white flower that blooms once in a lifetime for one night and fades by the morning. Its message in Japanese is "transient beauty", "transient love", like an empty dream or faint hope, "joy", "dainty" or "subtle", "a strong will", and most beautifully, "to meet you, even just once".

I wanted a longer chapter, but this felt right. I'm glad this is moving back along at last, the last couple of years have been really quite rough. The funny thing about time is how it all stretches out as you get older. Three weeks was an eternity, back in the day, now it's nothing.

I don't remember how I thought to put Tsubarov and Noin together, but I hope you give it a chance. There is a certain dramatic potential in Noin being his prodigy that I want to explore.

And lest we forgot, the "heuristically programmed algorithmic computer", aka HAL 9000, is really named Carl.


	8. Chapter 6 part 1: Hanasuou (1)

**「****The Secret Life of Gardenias****」**

**「**December, 181: Happy Families – Hanasuou (1)**」**

…

Milliard Peacecraft was having an inordinately good day. It was breezy and overcast but not too cold, his favourite kind of weather. He'd woken up all on his own, which was always better than having to be woken by the servants, and the Starlight Ball begins tonight.

It would be the first time he has been given permission to attend any formal festivities, and everything was coming along perfectly. He had drilled himself in dancing and etiquette so well he could do both in his sleep. His costume was undergoing its final touches, he had a respectable date (not that there were too many choices in his height category to begin with before he would have to be carried around on the dance-floor to give a decent waltz), and Aunt Lucy was here _and_ he had her personal guarantee that his cousin Rex would arrive in time for the Opening Ball. It has been a little over a year since Rex'd gone off to school and Milliard sorely missed having some decent company under the age of majority. They have so much to catch up on! The only children in his vicinity were all horrifyingly boring and childish and there were things that no adult, however awesome or sympathetic, could truly understand.

She wasn't really his aunt, of course, and Rex wasn't really his cousin, they were Relena's, because they were actually Katrina's sister and nephew; but he has known them all his life and they have never corrected him for calling them family. Presumably somewhere out among the stars, there was an entire clan of cousins, uncles and aunts related to him through the mother he'd never known that Katrina and his father promise to take him to meet when he was old enough, but at age five-and-three-quarters, he could not imagine needing any family other than the one he's already got.

Knowing that Rex was coming put an extra spring in the Princeling's step. He'll have to call him by his proper name now. "Rex" was something the older boy let him use because he could not get his baby tongue around "Treize" but now that Milliard was almost six, the rolling "tr-r" and soft "zze" combination no longer made him stutter. Rex would be proud! He would also be proud, Milliard hoped, of his victories against the snivelling children the adults keep trying to send in to somehow gain his royal affections. Now that his step-cousin was back, he could prove to that annoying _Neun_ kid once and for all how much better Rex was at everything compared to her, or anyone else in their age range, and put an end to her inane assertion that there could possibly be anyone more brilliant, more fantastic, and more worthy of his unflinching loyalty —

And if he could just get everyone else to see this too, then maybe they will see some sense and finally bring Rex home to Skagen Castle from that crummy far-away place called school for good!

**.**

There was just one very slight problem with Prince Millard's plan: it did not seem very much like Treize Khushrenada wanted to go to Sanq. In fact, he had done his very best to avoid having to do so by spending most of the week coercing his roommate Alessandro to go in his place instead.

Like most Lords and Ladies of the Dominion nations, Melusina Prinzessin Khushrenada had no qualms about using her son as a political chip and Treize was sick of it. He wanted her to call him and take him places because he was her son and she missed him, not because she was going to a party where his presence would further her position and strength her stock or some other such agenda. It was his _birthday_, damn it! Not to mention, Sanq was a terrible place for him. He always ends up in the middle of one or the other of the infamously epic fights between his mother and his Aunt Katya. Some offer would also most certainly be made for him to stay in Sanq, which he would then have to feel guilty about rejecting because, truth be told, Treize liked the freedom of being away at school. He just wished his mother would visit him more, that's all.

But while Alex was sorely tempted by the prospect of seeing his sister in Sanq, he wasn't quite as much of an idiot as Treize had hoped. At least, he was more aware of the ways things could go wrong and the consequences of being caught impersonating a Prince than Treize would have liked, even a dispossessed bastard one such as himself.

In the end, it was agreed that Alex was to come with him and switch places with him during the balls, which relieved Treize of the burden of being paraded around by like a fashion accessory while giving Alex the best opportunities of locating his sister and, hopefully, someone from Roma powerful enough to help them out of their muddled plight.

This worked out well enough for Treize since he did miss his Sanqere relatives, secretly. Aunt Katya was elegant and sensible, unlike his beautiful, licentious, mother, and her husband was the man who'd taught him to ride and shoot. He wanted to meet his baby cousin too, who was just a warm throbbing lump in Katya's belly when he'd left, and check in on the little aviary he had designed and built in the middle of their greenhouse. It was worth putting up with a few minutes of the lofty Imperial Princess Melusina for, he supposed.

To Alessandro's surprise, Melusina Romefeller Prinzessin Khushrenada seemed rather disinterested in her son and his guest.

He had expected some kind of interrogation regarding the circumstances of his and Treize's acquaintanceship such as one his grandmother, the Duchessa, levied towards every new face in her presence. Instead, the bewitching woman barely stirred as they entered her suite.

She was soaking in a claw-foot tub filled with deep red rose-petals under the stately window in the sitting room, thin cucumber slices covering her up-turned face and lily-white hands hanging over the sides, dipped in bowls of warm paraffin. It was a comfortably luxurious room with lavender and rose-gold accents and unusual patches on the walls where it seems the large collection of framed portraits now lying in a haphazard pile behind the rococo couch used to hang.

"Master Treize and guest, your Imperial Highness," the old man who'd brought them in from the shuttle hanger announced with an admirably deep bow.

"Thank you... Hello, baby," she acknowledged with a musical voice that made Alex blush, but that was the extent of it.

"Hello Mother. The veruccas look well," Treize said pleasantly while making a rude face at her as their usher retreated. He could have said anything; the woman who was his mother was no longer listening.

"I told you," he muttered lowly at Alex, "You could have done this on your own and she wouldn't have noticed. Come on."

Treize wanted to go off exploring his old haunts, but then Alex would realise that they had free run of the castle, contrary to the lies Treize'd told, and have no reason to go through with The Plan. Besides, he had to get Alex ready.

The sitting room split off into three additional rooms: a small drawing room for private entertaining, a lavish bedroom, and a large bathroom with two side chambers of its own, complete with locking doors, closets and vanity sets. The larger of these became their base of operations, in which Treize transformed Alex into a passable body double and himself into the classic cartoon villain, Zero.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Alex inspected himself worriedly in the full-length mirrors. He was a tragic mess of eyeliner and powder, dressed up as a colourless clown with a comical white ruff and white pompoms glued in two neat little rows as mock buttons. His jet black hair was shoved out of the way under a terrible red mop only technically considered a wig, complete with a frilly white cone hat, and his feet crammed into a pair of ornate pointy-toed boots with dainty feminine heels and a porcelain finish.

The awkward shoes were because Treize was several centimetres taller than Alex. The wig was to disguise that he was brunette, not dirty blonde. The caked-on make-up was because he was Pierrot the Pantomime Clown, naïve, lovestruck metaphor of the masses, so that Melusina and he can be a matching pair, but also so he would not be readily recognisable should he lose his mask.

In contrast, Treize wore black with blue and gold trims under an evil black-and-red cloak with a five-horned, featureless, black helm that covered the whole of his head, sold off the shelf at most good toy collector's stores. One-way visibility in the visor hid his face while allowing him to get a violet-tinted view of what's in front of him. It was annoying, but he didn't intend to keep it on after slipping out from the ball anyway.

"No-one will know, just hold your tongue," Treize said reassuringly, because Alex said everything with a heavy Neo-Lombard accent and Treize had none. "Trust me, Alessandro."

Alex wavered on his feet. The porcelain boots made it impossible to do any sort of walk that cannot be described as a _prance_, but if this is what it takes to find and rescue Lucrezia... He had promised himself that he will find her and that they will go home together somehow. He hasn't quite worked out how they were going to do that yet, but one step at a time. Not having to think too far ahead is one of the few privileges of being a ten year-old boy.

Alessandro Larucca of Roma took a deep breath. "Good luck, Khushrenada," he grimaced, and pranced out ahead into the big bad world of royal costumed parties and inattentive parents.

A different servant was waiting to lead them to the Grand Hall when the boys emerged, where groups of costumed men and women mingled politely outside its five sets of doors, waiting for them to open.

Melusina Romefeller, Alliance Ambassador to the Dominions and Imperial Princess of the now defunct empire of Deutscheland, was resplendent in a raw silk dress built out of artistically ripped layers to intimate a ragged, country look. The haltered neckline lent her an air of purity sharply juxtaposed by the seductive scarlet bolero jacket worn over it. Gold embroidering crawled richly across the red brocade, draping her arms and shoulders in an abundance of golden, blood-quenched, thorns and roses. Her face was powdered white as marble to match the elegantly ruffled collar at her throat and her hands were delicately covered in tattered raw silk gloves. A tentative black briar tendril wandered up the top of her breast, along her swan-like neck, and blossomed into a tiny black rosebud under her eye. Finally, a tiny silk top hat adorned with fresh white roses almost as large as the hat itself nestled atop the elaborate coif of hair piled on the top of her head. Everything was perfect.

"There's my escort. Hello, baby, we're going to have fun tonight," she cooed, leaning down to pin a corsage of miniature black and white roses to the Pierrot costume. Alex's heart stopped.

_She's going to notice!_

Amazingly, she didn't. There was hardly any intimacy in her interaction with the boy she thought was her son. Her attention rested on him only long enough to secure the flowers, as if she were reluctant to touch or acknowledge him. She hadn't even noticed his guest.

"_I can't do this,_" he hissed at the cartoon villain trailing behind him the moment she turned away. "_She knows. She must know! I told you, we're going to be found out!_"

"Steady on, my friend, you'll be fine. Just stay close to her and don't say a word," Treize replied, thinking how odd it was that it was more painful to watch his mother's interaction with 'him' than it was to experience it.

Inside the hall, like a distant dream, an orchestral violin piece started to sound.

…

Another world away, Ken Tsubarov found himself explaining his methodology to a five year-old kid who, against all common odds and probabilities, actually seemed quite fascinated by it. Having never spent any time around anyone under the age of twenty since he himself was a teen, Tsubarov had taken her grasp of the conversation for granted and simply assumed that all children of a certain background had a certain degree of metallurgy and speculative engineering studies. He's had to explain a few things several times, she was only a child, after all, and can't be expected to know everything yet. It was surprisingly invigorating to be sharing conversation with someone while he worked again.

Lucrezia adored the crotchety old man. He didn't talk slow to her, for a start. Most people do because she was small, even when they know she is smart. There were no awful, awkward moments of him trying to check if she could understand him. He simply talked, like he would with anyone else, and answered questions when she thought to ask them. Plus, he was a tombraider. How cool is that!

Although, tombraiding was turning out to be more boring than she'd originally thought. It was a lot more science stuff than adventuring, largely dusting and scribbling and swearing at things until something happens, from what she'd gathered, but reality was never quite the same as the ideal, after all. Most of it was boiling lumps of oddly shaped stuff he'd picked up off the floor. She didn't ask why he would do that; it seemed quite self-explanatory when bits of rust and grime fell off the bits he was cooking to reveal other bits underneath. A bath is a bath.

It was dim down in the big underground island cave. Luckily, Tsubarov was able to produce a lamp from his luggage to work by and a tiny LED flashlight for her from a forgotten breast pocket.

Lucrezia got the feeling the gigantic broken old things in the back of the cavern were supposed to scare her, but they didn't. To her they just looked sad and lonely, like her brother's discarded toy soldiers, only bigger— much bigger.

"What are their names?" She asked, instead of asking him what they were. Her tiny five year-old voice carried fearlessly across the strange mechanical graveyard like a ray of niggling sunshine.

"Don't know. It's not official," Tsubarov answered "but we sometimes called them Talgeists."

"Tall geeses? They don't look very goose-like," she complained, cocking herself around in strange angles trying to imagine what the hunks of black, twisted metal would look like new and whole.

"_Tal-giest_, it's Deutsche. Wait..."

Among the things that'd come out of Tsubarov's silver suitcase of tricks was a leather-bound book, thick with pictures and extra note pages, shoved haphazardly into a resealable plastic bag. He lifted the book out carefully from the plastic and thumbed through the jumbled mess of precious findings until he found a Polaroid of the cavern ceiling.

"Here," he stabbed a peeling nail-bitten finger at the photographed inscription. "_Lag hier Talgeister, nicht mehr unser Himmel verdunkeln_..."

"'Lay here, Tal-geists, no more'... no, 'don't darken our sky any more'? So... oh!" Her little face lit up delightedly, "like the _Weltgeist_, right? But for a valley?"

It should impress Tsubarov that what had taken the Vestmanna project's anthropologists three months to suggest appeared obvious to her in mere moments, but that would be unfair to the anthropologists. Children did not have to worry about things like professional credibility or being disproved on the same level they do. And anyway, etymology debates hold no interest for men like him. He showed her a second picture. This one was of a dark blue piece of paper with a clunky humanoid shape sketched on it in neat white lines.

"This is what we think they'd look like."

"This doesn't look very much like them," Lucrezia peered doubtfully into the dark.

"It's a projection, use your imagination."

She bit her lip and decided it wasn't worth arguing that she _was_ using her imagination because she wasn't sure what being 'a projection' meant and asking him would only weaken her case.

"Why are they called ghosts?" She moved on instead. "Do they go invisible and pass through walls?"

"No," a corner of his face twitched at the childish thought. "It's just a name."

"Names should mean things," she mused solemnly, trying to compare the blueprint snapshot to another piece of derelict. "Otherwise, how would anyone know what things are? I'd love to see them fly. I bet they fly all the way into outer space... oh, but then they'd be Space-ghosts, hm..."

Tsubarov put down his pen and notepad. "That's absurd," he said, fixing her with a scornful look. "These things are obviously not designed for aerodynamics and Mankind did not develop the kind of propulsion technology that would be necessary for something of this mass to break atmosphere until after the Harmony War. The power requirement for the necessary lift… the power necessary to remotely mobilise something of this size and complexity alone is beyond anything we currently have, even today..." It was a sore point, the math just didn't work. The best Tsubarov had been able to come up with was chaining each recreated unit up to their own power plant by way of some kind of umbilical cord.

That was when the Romefeller Foundation lost interest and murdered the project; his project, his _baby_.

"Can't you make bigger batteries?" she quipped, not really understanding his angst.

…

**A/N**:

Part 1 of 3 planned parts for this chapter.

**Hanasuou**, _Cercis Chinensis_, another predominantly Asian blossom carrying meanings of "awakening", "frugality", "the Good Life", "suspicion", "betrayal", "taking advantage of kindness", "atheism" and "nobility" (the class and lifestyle, not the virtue). Its cousins in the West includes the Judas Tree, on which Judas Iscariot supposedly hanged himself (the story of the Last Supper always tastes to me like a bittersweet yaoi love-triangle). At home in Asia, it has long been used to symbolize homesickness, familial harmony and prosperity.

**Treize** – I realised I'd mistakenly set Treize's birthday to February in one of the earlier chapters, but it isn't. It's in the midst of December, and I've a good reason for it, honest.

**Classic Cartoon Villian Zero **– Is Lelouch vi Britannia, a "dispossessed-Prince-turned-masked-avenger" type character from the series Code Geass. Now, where have we heard that setup before, hmm...

**Giant Mecha on Umbilical Cords** – Is a comical thought at first, but is actually humanity's worst nightmare waiting to happen at the hands of a group of schizophrenic, hormonal teens *_cough_NGE_cough_* With that in mind, I can't really look upon the Foundation as the bad guy here for terminating Tsubarov's research...


	9. Chapter 6 part 2: Hanasuou (2)

**「****The Secret Life of Gardenias****」**

**「**December, 181: Happy Families – Hanasuou (2)**」**

**…**

Guests filed into the vaulted hall in twos and fours to parade before their costumed hosts in fantastic, dazzling costumes. There were pirates and wizards and mermaids and elves, knights and goddesses and anthropomorphics galore, each secretly vying to be the most glamorous of all.

Leading the procession was the five year-old Crown Prince of Sanq, dressed as Antoine de Saint-Exupery's iconic portrait of _Le Petit Prince_ in an exaggerated turquoise long coat fully lined in orange-red velvet, with star-crested epaulets and concealed hooping that put a permanent flare to its bottom edge. A long, thin scarf the exact sunny shade of his tousled blonde hair and a curved sabre hanging off his hip completed the look.

Beside him, lavishly decked in a wealth of tiny silver crystals threading through a long, snowy wig and cascading through the layers of her powder blue ballgown, was the North Star. A tall eight-armed star perched on the side of her head, holding a white mask in place against her eyes. Despite everything, Elise Weridge has never felt more beautiful in her seven years of life. Everything was so shiny-glittery perfect from the tip of her nails to the swish of her dress, it was hard not to be just a little glad. The only stain on her evening was the Prince, whom she had been forced to accompany, although he seemed quite content to ignore her when not using her to show off his manners and charms.

On the royal dais, the King and Queen took turns holding a happy, grabby baby in a fluffy, furry jumpsuit with adorable, alert fennec ears nearly as large as her head and a bushy golden tail, surrounded by a modest handful of royal guards and ladies-in-waiting.

Elise tarried, hoping to catch a glimpse of her father, until the Prince kicked surreptitiously at her ankles to hurry her along.

"Pay attention," he hissed, adopting the royal plural. "Don't embarrass Us!"

The sweet lilting sound of strings bled into a lively waltz of pianos, flutes and horns. The waltz is a simple dance. Three basic steps executed in symmetry spin the dancers across the room in interlocking orbits. One steps, the other pivots, they turn, and, places reversed, they begin again – step, pivot, turn. Couples took turns at the centre of the ballroom, completing light-footed circuits around the dancefloor before elegantly withdrawing to allow another pair to take their place in the pattern.

It was the first time either of them have danced in public or with each other. Elise took a deep breath and gently repositioned her arms. Milliard was shorter than her usual dance partners, which threw her a bit. Her feet were used to working without the pressures of being watched and the more she tried to focus on them, the harder it was to get them co-ordinated. _Don't panic._ She knew the waltz well. Her aunt says it's all about timing and looking graceful. All she has to do is keep calm and let the Prince lead.

As it turns out, he was all toes and heels and Elise quickly lost her rhythm trying to whisk her feet safely out of his reach. She spent most of the dance walking red-faced around and alongside Milliard rather than properly dancing. Mercifully, no-one seemed to notice under her floor-length skirt.

Several couples drifted towards them as they neared their starting position, but Prince Milliard was determined to prove his endurance and keep going, to his companion's dismay. Half-way through the third lap, he started to catch on.

"Are you _walking?_ Don't you know how to dance?" He growled. "How can you possibly think you could come to the ball with Us if you didn't know how to dance?"

Her cheeks burned in humiliation. It was his fault she's lost, silly, arrogant, greedy, boy! "You made me! I didn't want to!"

"Liar," he scoffed. "Every girl wants to dance with the Prince."

She wanted to cry and stomp her foot on him, but everyone was watching, she could feel their gaze boring through the back of her neck. She wouldn't even be in this position if he had abided by the laws of propriety and taken Lucrezia, like he was supposed to. And Lucrezia, whom she had looked up to all this time, isn't she supposed to come rescue her?

What would a Lady do? What would Lucrezia do? Elise didn't know. All she knew in that moment, beyond any shadow of doubt, was that all Royalty sucked.

**.**

As at most balls, not everyone had the mind to take part as the opening notes to the traditional first waltz sounded. Not everyone had the stamina or inclination to dance, and even among those who did, there were those who had arrived without appropriate dance partners, such as the Alliance Army General laden down with an army of frivolous medals issued to him against his better judgement so he would seem important, and those who were too important to be seen cavorting in just any public at all, like the Dukes and Duchesses of Neo-Lombardia.

These were immediately recognisable to Alessandro, who had spent most of his life in their dazzling company. They gathered under the giant glass windows near the main terrace, some distance away from the royal dais, and set up a bowyer attended upon by their own army of servants dressed in pure white, imported directly from the Court of the Iron Crown. The Court prides themselves on Justice and Mercy Above All. Someone in that bowyer is bound to be kind and powerful enough to petition his father for him and Lucrezia to return home, if not bring them back themselves.

It took him a while to realise, after finding himself shipped off to St. Anthony's and his sister to Sanq, that they had been banished, though he had no honest inkling as to why. It could have been any number of childish missteps or nothing at all, Alex was well aware of the fickle nature of fortune and favour in the Court of the Iron Crown. Whatever it was, wasn't six months more than enough?

He scanned the room subtly for some glimpse of any lone little girls with shoulder-length black hair and dark purple eyes among the crowd. He hadn't given any thought at all as to how he would find Lucrezia once at the ball, which he was now greatly regretting. He whipped around to say so to his costumed co-conspirator, only to find that Treize had gone as well. Alex gritted his teeth.

"It's Milliard's first Ball," the United Earth Sphere Alliance Ambassador, Treize's mother, whispered at him, "remember to go put in some nice words in his ear for us after I'm done with you."

Milliard? Alex nodded dumbly, having no clue who or what that was. It wasn't as if he planned on running all of Treize's errands of the night anyway, only those convenient to him. That was the deal.

Clear knots of people and conversation started to emerge as the orchestra moved into its next song. The Ambassador flitted gracefully between them, slipping effortlessly into each circle as if she had been there all along and moving on again before the novelty of her attentions wore off. Slowly one of those groups gathered around her, trailing behind her like a brood of smitten ducklings.

Thankfully, no-one seemed to be paying much attention to Alex at all, despite all the fuss showered upon him and his adorable little Pierrot costume. Melusina made a grand show of it to everyone she met: "And this is my son Treize. Isn't he just darling? Look at that awful wig! He picked these costumes for us to be the same. Isn't that sweet?" most of it lies. The costume had been sent to their dormitory rooms straight from the shop. They hadn't even known Treize's size.

The gaudy lords and ladies fawned politely over his costume, though none bothered to look in his eyes, which were a completely different shade of blue to Treize's, or speak to him directly. It's no wonder Treize didn't want to be stuck here with them.

There were other children of similar age to him being shown off on the arms of their parents, but he saw no-one resembling his sister's age group yet. _Zita would be so much better at this_, the thought rose unbidden to the front of his mind. _She would have some annoying, super-smart way of finding you in a heartbeat. Think, Alessandro, think! You're the elder brother!_

Treize often said that St. Anthony's Academy for Fine Gentleman was where boys like them were sent to in order to be forgotten, and it was quite understandable for someone in Treize's position. Bastard Princes to dead Empires make everyone nervous, especially ambitious new husbands. Alessandro had no such fears, however. He was his father's only legitimate male heir. Boys like him were more important and don't get casually shoved into closets to be forgotten. There must be some mistake.

A sick lump bore through his stomach: what if they _had_ forgotten? What if the reason he had not received any word from his parents since leaving Roma was because they'd forgotten they'd sent him away to the wrong school? What if Lucrezia isn't here because she is already home, safe and sound with them in Roma?

Then suddenly, like a moment of clarity, there she was; or someone that could have easily been her, weaving through the crowd in a pale blue dress sparkling with crushed gems, towards a pair of doors that led back into the castle. He has seen enough girls cry to recognise the posture and stride of one trying not to.

"Zita! _Aspettami_!" He called out without thinking and twisted away from the Ambassador and her gaggle of admiring gossips, nearly knocking over a sullen vision of Saint-Exupery's Little Prince in his haste. The boy said something, but Alex hadn't the time for it. "Zita!" He called again, pushing his way out of the ballroom.

The Ambassador turned with a puzzled frown on her porcelain brow. "Treize?"

He didn't stop.

He should, but he didn't. How could he? Someone who could be his little sister was crying.

"Zita!" He ran down an empty hallway after the small retreating figure and the world seemed to fall away in a great senseless roar when he saw that the blotchy, tear-stained face wasn't hers after all.

"Rex?"

He might have reacted differently if he'd had a moment to gather and compose himself. Unfortunately for Milliard, he was still flushed and confused when the little Prince caught up to him.

"Re... I mean, T-Treize... is everything alright?"

"My sister. Where is she? What have you done with her?" He grabbed Milliard by the wrist of his out-stretched hand and shook him in a fit of frightful urgency.

Milliard whimpered and struggled, to no avail. The white snarling clown thing he'd thought was his beloved cousin towered over him, wringing his arm into a bloodless stump like some kind of ghostly vampire.

"R...Rex? You're scaring me..."

"_Where is she?_"

Behind them, the girl screamed. "Put him down!" she cried, hurling a sharp, star-shaped headdress followed by a tiny pair of silver dancing shoes weakly at Milliard's attacker. "We don' know anything! Put him down!"

"Not until you tell me where my sister is!" He yanked the princeling around, trying to swat at her.

"I said we don't know!" Elise bawled, desperately trying to reach her shoes for a second barrage. Her hands trembled so hard she couldn't even pick them up. Her aim was severely hampered by the damp hair and tears in her eyes, and she could barely feel her legs enough to stand.

She wasn't strong like Thomas or Spencer, or fast and clever like Alain and Lucrezia, and a rather large part of her would quite like to see the ghastly little boy who had done nothing but pick on her all night get what he deserved, but she couldn't run away and leave him behind, not when she is the only help he's got!

The older, bigger, boy didn't even flinch as one of her silver slippers bounced off the top of his head. Milliard hung limply in his grasp, on the verge of tears himself. "You... you're not Treize...?" He stammered stupidly.

Something went off in Alex's head. He heard it go with a dull, almost metallic twang.

"Of course not! How dim-witted are the people of Sanq?" He howled, having clean forgotten that he was meant to be disguised as Treize. "I am Alessandro Larucca of the Neo-Lombard House of Larucca under the Iron Crown _and I want to see my sister!_"

A dozen hands reached between the tempestuous trio, pulling them apart. Elise wasn't sure what happened next, on account of the chaos, though she remembered crying insipidly for her shoes, then worrying that the ball was all ruined because of her.

**…**

***Updated 10th May 2013**

**A/n:**

Since beginning this series on a whim years ago, and in the interim where I sort of forgot what an "I" and "Internet" were, I had the opportunity to associate with a number of children in the 3 ~ 10 age range that mostly served to cement the following hypothesis: that

1, children will grow up as quickly as you need them to, then forget it all again as soon as you let them. The latter reversion is effective no matter what age the person is when given permission to stop achieving and revert, but the ability to grow exponentially under pressure is limited only to the young. We today are too soft on our kids.

And 2, all children are more or less psychotic until approximately age 10, when they hit a brief refractory window before sinking into the psychosis and sociopathy of puberty and hormonal instincts for the next six to eight years. That is, optimistically speaking.


End file.
